Essay on Theatre Review

One Act Festival 2012 has become an important event in the theatrical life of London because many directors presented their performance in the course of the festival. In this regard, Book Ends by David K. O’Hara is particularly noteworthy because the play creates a surreal world, which intertwines closely with the real world. As a result, the audience has difficulties with distinguishing the imagined world from the real world. The play conveys the story of two book fetishists, who look for love and affection and use books as the means to create the imagined world, where they are beloved and have love. In such a way, the author of the play attempts to draw the attention of the audience to the problem of the loneliness of individuals and the role of books in the contemporary world because the author shows that people almost ignore books and are indifferent to books.

Facts

The play Book Ends by David K. O’Hara is the play created by Savin-O’Hara production company. I watched the play in the course of the One Act Festival 2012. The play was performed on June 1, 2012. The play was performed by two leading actors, Russell Woodhead, as the man character of the play, and Karina Sugden, as the female character of the play. The decorations were minimal but quite effective and eye-catching. The minimalism of decorations and simple costumes of main characters contributed to the focus of the audience on the content of the play and the message conveyed by the main characters. The play had little musical accompaniment and few special effects. In such a way, the main characters of the play draw the full attention of the audience to their parts and messages.

Plot summary

In fact, the entire play focuses on two main characters, book fetishists, who are in the bookstore and develop their fantasies. The male character, performed by Russell Woodhead, is dreaming of an imagined woman, whom he adores. He imagines that he is in love with that woman, whom he calls Regina. However, Regina is an unreal character. Another main character of the play is a female character, who also dreams of a man, whom she imagine to be in love with. In such a way, she is the imagined “Regina”, while the male character is “Jeremy” the imagined man she is dreaming about. The two main characters meet each other and invent their stories but the more they communicate the more they have to invent and to they just play off. Both main characters read piles of books but they also imagine books which they are talking about.

Reaction to the script

In fact, the script was well-written and comprised the main part of the play. The actors and the director of the play did their best to attract the attention of the audience to the script of the play and to the message the author for the play attempted to convey to the audience. The audience focuses on the play of the main characters and it is quite difficult to distinguish the reality from the surreal world created by the author of the play. The main characters seem to mix up the reality and their imagination and the audience faces difficulties with adequate understanding, where the imagination of the main character ends and the reality begins. The script contains simple and comprehensible language which is easily perceived by the broad audience. The audience perceives messages of the author of the play but often it is up to the audience to decide what actually the author of the play attempted to say.