Dennis Potters' Blue Remembered Hills

Dennis Potters' Blue Remembered Hills

A.E. Houseman’s poem looks back at childhood as a “land of lost

content” meaning that when you are a child you are innocent and you

don’t have a care in the world. Also he says that childhood is a

“happy highway where I went / and cannot come again” meaning that they

are the best years of your life but you can never go back there.

Dennis Potter took the poem and turned it in to a play about a group

of children who were on there school holidays in the forest of dean in

Gloucester. Potter is asking if childhood is such a land of lost

content and is children so innocent.

The poem was set in the summer of 1943 and there were 5 boys and 2

girls who were played by adults. The first person we meet is Willie

who is playing at being a spitfire. Next we meet peter who is a bit of

a bully. There is Audrey who is a bit of an ugly tag-along and then

there is Angela who is a pretty girl who orders Audrey about. There is

also Raymond who has a stutter and John he is a bit of a hero and is

number 2 last there is Donald he is a bit of a pyromaniac.

In the play the behaviour is realistic because that is what they would

really do if they were in the forest of dean. They do things that

only children do for example in scene 5 Donald, Angela and Audrey are

fanaticising about being adults and are playing houses. Also they

laugh about knickers being made out of silk. John and peter have a

fight in scene 11. It all started in scene 10 Raymond was standing on

his head and Audrey shouted that there was blood in his ear and John

was standing up for Raymond and Peter was trying to make Raymond loose

and then they get in to a fight and John won and peter was running

away “Run, babby, run!” and peter ends up in the old barn talking to

Donald. In this part of the play Dennis Potter is trying to make them

look as if they are not so innocent. They are being deliberately

cruel when they are trying to knock a squirrel out of a tree and they

eventually knock it out and kill it. An incident of when they are

unintentionally being cruel is when they trap Donald in the barn when

Donald is starting a fire in amongst the hay.