e’ and ‘kettle’. This can be seen like a child’s game of exchanging real words for code words, to prevent outsiders/adults from understanding what is being said. However, in the rhythm of the sentence the changed words fall into place and it is clear what is meant. Towards the end of the play, the two words crowd out almost all the rest, but the meaning is still fairly clear. But, in the closing scene, ‘blue’ has been reduced to ‘bl’ or ‘b’ and ‘kettle’ to ‘ket ket ket’ or ‘k k k’. And as one can see from this how Caryl Churchill affects the acting process through her script writing. “Churchill has never been a playwright cowed by dramatic conventions…in Blue Kettle, language itself is eventually tossed aside, as the dialogueof the emotionally resonant little play is gradually reduced to the two wordsof the title – and ultimately just the letters that compose them – with scantloss in the power or meaning.” In regards to the characters of Blue Kettle, there are varied selections of different Daniel MoscovitchCaryl Churchill4personalities who appear in the play. The mothers in Blue Kettle, Mrs Plant, Mrs Oliver, Mrs Vane, and Mrs Clarence all come from different backgrounds and have all got distinctive personalities. And finally, Derek, the play’s anti-hero, is an unmarried nobody of forty years, preying on the old women who have had to give up a son at birth, either because they were unmarried, or already married to someone not the father. Derek has a girlfriend called Enid whom he lives with, but he seems less interested in her than in the succession of mothers he finds for himself. “Ket ket still… I’m still ket I am … if bl liked me.” - Derek Derek appears a lot weaker than he might appear, as he desperately goes between one mother to another searching for something he ha...
