Response To Vinegar Tom Essay, Research Paper

The play Vinegar Tom was a very unusual play. Everything in the play was very different and weird. Some of the parts in the play were very vulgar and obscene. The plot of this play confronted many issues dealing with men and women. Although this play was set many years ago, many of those issues still are around even today. This play was very interesting in that of the plot, but also the elements of the play. Some examples of these elements are the set, acting, and the reason behind some characters.

When I first walked in the theatre, I thought the set was very interesting. And once again I was sitting on the front row, so I was able to get a good look at the set. As I was sitting down I noticed all the cloth on the stage floor. The first thing that jumped into my mind was that they were going to trip on it. Then as the play progressed, no one tripped on the cloth. So the I was looking for the purpose of all the cloth lying around. Every time a character would talk they would play with the cloth. They would also wrap it around their bodies. I did not get the point of this. For example when Ellen was talking to Susan: when Susan went and sat down by Ellen, Ellen took the cloth and wrapped it around Susan. And when Margery and Jack were talking one would have one side of a cloth and the other would have the other side of the cloth. I did not get why they were always messing with the cloth all the time. I did not get what it represented. The what made it very confusing was when, Alice was talking to Susan, and she used the cloth to represent mud and made a man out of the cloth. So then it made me think that the cloth was supposed to be mud. That just really confused me. I just think it would have been better if they would have just left the cloth alone and said their lines without messing with the cloth.

This brings me to the acting. Overall, I thought the acting was very good. One of the best actors I thought was Becca Lackey who played Margery. She did a good job of expressing her feelings. She especially did a good job when she was fighting with her husband, Jack. I thought she did a good job of letting the audience know what she was feeling. She would sometimes get a little too loud in that part though. I don’t know if it was that I was sitting on the front row of if everyone thought she was loud, but she was pretty loud at that one point. On the other hand, the actress, Crystal M. Utley was not loud at all. This was really a problem when she came out for the first time. Some of her first lines were hard to understand. I was sitting on the front row and could not understand some of the things that she was saying. I think her character would have been a lot more affective if she was a little loud with her parts.

Now there is the issue with the singers. I did not get their point at all. The first time they came out I was like, ’ok cool’. Then they kept coming out every five minutes of the play and singing a song that really made no sense to me. The singers really had no purpose. They would just come out sing a little tune then leave, and everyone in the audience would just be like, ‘ok what was that all about’. So in the long run I think that part could have been left out and the play would have been just as good with out them. Finally, I thought the language was very vulgar. Every sentence had a bad word in it. It was like they need to say some bad word to get their point across. Every now and then I think the language would have been fine, but it was happening like every couple lines. I just think that it took from the play with all the bad language.

Overall, I thought the play was pretty good. Even though there were some downfalls, I think that this play was very well done. With the things that they were talking about and the way they portrayed everything, I think that they did their best. The setting, acting, and language are just a few things that make up a performance, and people are always critiquing it. There will never be a play that will not be criticized. There will always be improvement in everything, everyone does. Besides the flaws in the play, I thought that is was very good and I would recommend it to someone else to watch.