Summary Of The Play 'The Revenge' By Andrew Sachs

The play that I constructed illustrates different stages of grief. Elaine, the mother struggles to navigate through her day whereas Nick has embraced his loss and found a way to continue his day-to-day life and finds comfort in the memory of his daughter. The decision to set the story in a homely place, the kitchen, seemed natural as to indicate Elaine’s struggle and displacement with her surroundings, simple tasks such as making a cup of tea or breakfast are proving impossible. I preferred a closed space and closed time setting as I feel it gives the audience a sense of reality, that the grief is real, making the piece more solid.
Andrew Sachs’ play for radio, ‘The Revenge’ influenced my writing, I thought about how sound, not just dialogue, could tell the …show more content…
Nick seemed as distracted as Elaine yet managed to be perceptive of her emotions, which didn’t feel realistic. So whilst editing it I kept this in mind. I attempted to keep the speech realistic, I thought about how their emotions would affect what they say, or what they don’t say. Nick’s language is attentive, comforting where Elaine is distracted and her sentences aren’t always complete, she says herself, she can’t find the right words.
Whilst critiquing my work, my peers felt that there was too much focus on the background sound, it was detail that along with the characters actions were a given. It was unnecessary information that didn’t add to the story telling, the story needed to come through the characters. Elaine’s fixation with the seagull was a conscious metaphor as to her distress of losing her daughter. There were questions surrounding her death that I wanted Elaine to put forward but not directly; I felt that this was appropriate as it isolated the issue as well adding strong imagery for the listeners. There is a lot of space around the dialogue, it’s reflective and the metaphor adds to