Justice Served

In the MU Theatre production of Justice Served, an acting element that stands out was Milbre Burch’s monologue, Sometimes I Sing. This portion of the show was written and performed in a way that allowed the audience to really connect with Minnie Wright and allows her to explain her reasoning for what might have happened in Trifles. Burch’s emotional performance was a powerful conclusion to a very powerful play. When Burch describes her husband killing her canary, the monologue takes a turn to pull in the audience to her cause. Speaking to a friend, her performance left the audience sympathetic to her situation and asking themselves what they might do faced with the same challenges. Simply, her performance justified murder.

In The Devil’s Own, Lindsay Murray delivers the performance of Sykes Jones in a way that shows the audience the terrible situation that Delia is in. His performance conveyed clearly the hate and indifference Sykes has for his wife. With Murray’s performance, the audience could feel Deila’s pain and connect with her in a way that allowed for them to celebrate his death with her. He shows this type of abuse and indifference in the scene when Delia walks in on him and Pansy. His almost non-response gives the audience a reason to feel disgust toward him and truly understand the situation Deila is in.

Finally, stage direction in The Devil’s Own was an impressive element in these selections. With such an open set and limited space, the director was able to guide actors to positions best suited to audience engagement. Although different settings of the play (i.e. the store, the church, Delia’s home) shared space on the stage, the audience always understood what was taking place. Characters transitioned from setting to setting seamlessly and without confusion, a feat that many plays cannot accomplish.

Task Based Writing:

In each of the three plays, the set was simple with minimal frills but was always enough. The sets, often just wooden walls with few items to help the audience understand the setting, were realistic of the character’s situations and time periods. The costumes followed in this by using simplicity but elegance to show the strong nature of the characters (especially the women) while still keeping true to the settings. As a contrast, lighting for the production was often too low and did not contribute much to the design.