Comparing and Contrasting the Play Fat Fryers with the Play Treasure Island

In Fat Fryers I play a supermarket helper and a woman who has joined a Fat Fighters group. I went to see the play Treasure Island at derby Playhouse on the 17th November 2007 on a school trip.

Fat Fryers contains lots of information about health issues, as this is the main concern, whereas Treasure Island was concerned with finding the treasure they have heard so much about.

Fat Fryers has a didactic structure and the style is to inform the audience whereas Treasure Island is an adventure story, used to thrill and excite the audience and keep them on the edge of their seats.

Fat Fryers is a play containing a series of incidents that eventually come together to form a story, but Treasure Island had a strong story structure throughout and this could be easily followed by the audience.

Both the plays contain non-naturalistic characters. In fat Fryers we use very stereotypical characters and these are portrayed in a non-naturalistic way. Also Treasure Island is about stereotypical pirates who are portrayed very like we expect a pirate to be and this is not necessarily true.

In both plays, all the actors play a number of different characters each. For example in Fat Fryers, one actress plays eight different parts and also in Treasure Island, one actress played both Jim Hawkins’ mother and later a pirate.

The props, sound effects and set in fat Fryers are very impressionistic as for example we used chairs as shelves in a shop whereas the set, props and sound effects in Treasure Island were very naturalistic and made the audience think they were real, for example the real wood used for the Hispaniola and the benches in the bar.

Both plays contain singing and dancing, however Treasure Island contained many songs, that were also used to help the scene changes flow whereas Fat fryers only has one song and dance and this is considerably less than Treasure Island.

Both plays are adapted from somewhere however they are adapted from different places. Fat Fryers is adapted from television shows Little Britain and Catherine Tate, and Treasure Island is adapted from the book by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Fat Fryers is a very comic play but does have some serious parts in it whereas Treasure Island is a much more serious play but did have some humorous parts and characters in it, for example Squire Trelawney was a comic character.

The costumes used in Fat Fryers were very naturalistic for the period the play is set as they are supermarket outfits, and clothes that modern day housewives would wear and this fits in with the period. However, Treasure Island’s costumes were fitting for the 1700’s which is when the play was set and these are pirates outfits so would look out of place in Fat Fryers.

In Fat Fryers, the music used is only for the song and dance but in Treasure Island, the music is used throughout to heighten the drama and add tension for the audience.