PEOPLE ARE FRIENDLY

People Are Friendly

People Are Friendly

Introduction

Anyone who's dwelled in London for any extent of time will recognise with the sentiments voiced by Michelle and her beau Robert in Michael Wynne's new play, The People Are Friendly.  The People are Friendly expends its first two hours or so in the guise of an outrageously comical comedy. Suddenly, things start to get graver as it turns into a communal drama of life in a dejected village which has lost its dignity.

 

Analysis After 12 years in the capital, Michelle has escaped back to her dwelling village out-of-doors Liverpool, where her new palatial, if rather crumbling, abode overlooks the land parcel still dwelled in by her parents and sister. To commemorate her homecoming, she asks for her family around for a barbecue but, of course, things don't precisely proceed to plan (Wynne, 2002).

Dominic Cooke's output milks the predictable jokes that originate from cocktails, hors d'oeuvres ("they gaze like they've just fell out of someone's arse" is the decision on stuffed vine leaves) and general party protocol, but there are more basic clashes between the pretensions and misperceptions of cosmopolitan Michelle and the every day truths of her labouring family. After some Act One meandering, when Wynne's script unsafely misplaces impetus, the deepness of the split up between their places is made all too clear when, in Act Two, Michelle discloses minutia of her new job, sparking a battle with her sister that underscores just how patronising a commentary like "the persons are so friendly" can be (Sharman, 2004).

As Donna, Michelle Butterly turns in an outstandingly gritty performance. A factory-working mother tired from the unchanging claims of an jobless beau, a mute and strongly sensed distracted child, and a drug-peddling teenaged female child (the luscious and lippy Sheridan Smith) with Britney Spears ...