����ý

Willy Russell gives instructions at the start of the play for how the stage should be used in the performance. There is not a requirement for many props or pieces of scenery. Even though the way the characters speak is naturalistic, the staging is not (this is also true of the actors playing characters at different ages and the Narrator’s character).

Consider why Russell has included the following staging points in the play’s ‘Production Note’:

• There should be different settings and time spans being indicated by lighting changes and no cumbersome scene changes to allow the play to flow along easily and smoothly. The focus is on the events of the play and the relationships between the characters, rather than appearances. This allows the audience to focus their attention on the play’s central themes and ideas and be drawn into the emotion of the play, without being distracted by scene changes.
• Two areas are semi-permanent – the Lyons' and the Johnstone house. These two areas are separate on the stage, emphasising the differences between the two families and the lives they live. However, there is also a reminder that the houses are geographically not very distant – during the period in which the play was set, poor and rich areas of Liverpool could be very close together.
• We see the interior of the Lyonses' comfortable home but usually only the exterior front door of the Johnstone house, with the ‘interior’ scenes taking place outside the door. Again, this would remind the audience of the different lifestyles that Mrs Johnstone and Mrs Lyons, and then Mickey and Edward, have. The comfort of the Lyons’ house is a big contrast to the lack of warmth suggested to the audience through only showing them the Johnstones’ front door.
• The area between the two houses acts as communal ground for street scenes, park scenes, etc. When the boys are young, they are unaware of the significance of the differences between them, so they can behave as equals away from their homes, where the differences between their backgrounds are not important.