Someone Who'Ll Watch over Me

Lauren
Professor Williams
Intro to Theater
October 3,2012
Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me
On October 2, I watched a play at Ohio State-Newark. The play was called Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me and was about these three men that were being held hostage. The content of the play was their life while being held captive by unseen guards. Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me is a play consisting of an adequate set, pleasing costumes, decent lighting, and admirable acting.
When the lights came on, at the beginning of the play, there was a lot to take in. It was a box set with yellow peeling walls showing patches of brick, covered in dirt and age. Around the bottom and top of the set was a colorful chunky border with orange, purple, and greens. This seemed out of place to me. I couldn’t figure out why the director would want there to be a colorful, bright border if the rest of the walls were dirty and had a grey tint. Three mattresses lay against the walls with a few thin blankets and one pillow and a chair was thrown into the corner of their room. Also, each character had it’s water bottle. That seemed normal enough to me but I was confused as to why two bottles had no wrapper and one of the bottles had a Dasani wrapper.
The three characters appeared to be wearing ordinary summer and spring clothes. The clothes they wore were dirty and torn up giving the appearance that they had been worn for quite some time. There were no shoes of any kind on the characters, which helped portray the fact that they were being held hostage. Also, I noticed the clothes represented the character’s homeland. Adam wore a t-shirt and running shorts representing America, Michael wore a button up shirt and cut-off khakis to represent England, and Edward wore khaki shorts and a white top for Ireland.
The lights were set up in a unique way. There were spotlights filling the whole stage and one tiny light bulb that appeared to be hanging from a string in the center of the stage. My take was that the sole light bulb was used to portray the ceiling light of the hostage room. Also, the lighting reflected well off the yellow walls, giving the appearance of more light, so less was actually used. Lighting can give an idea of the mood. Since there was plenty of light, I got the feel that the characters were being closely watched, but at the same time, I felt the mood was neutral. It did not seem to be dark and fearful, but it also did not seem to be hopeful or enthusiastic. During the scene changes, the whole room went pitch black. The mood was created to represent and emphasize everything, so one could clearly see what it was like in the room that they were healed hostage in.
The acting of the three performers in this play was quite pleasing. Michael and Edward used accents, which made it believable that the two were actually from different countries. When the characters watched “films” aloud and pretended to drink with each other, I got the feeling that they were desperate for entertainment inside their room. When the characters were supposed to be angry at one another, the actors would raise their voices and yell. They even cussed to get their point made. This helped portray the fact that the characters were upset. The actor’s would use facial expressions to show the character’s mood as well. They would smile if it was a happy moment, but they would frown for upsetting moments. When Adam was taken away, the actor portraying Edward displayed fear and sadness by frowning and pacing. If the characters’ acting was not good enough, the characters would not have been able to make me believe them. The most entertaining part of the play was when Michael and Edward competed to see who was the better rabbit. It could not have been so entertaining if either had not had good acting skills.
All in all, I found the play to be somewhat enjoyable. There were points during the play where I was confused about the time frame of the play, but the acting and set made up for what the plot lacked. I would more than likely recommend this play to a friend.