Saturday Night Fever at the Surflight Theater: Review

Olivia Williamson
Mrs. Guarino
Ib Theater HL
14 September 2018
Saturday Night Fever at the Surflight Theater: Review
Saturday Night Fever was performed this Summer in Long Beach Island at the Surflight Theater. The storyline is about a boy named Tony Manero, who by day is a worker in a paint store, and by night the king of a local dance club. The Surflight Theater did an excellent job focusing on detail in order to get a lot of emotion and feeling out of their audience.
The part of Tony Manero was executed outsandidly. It appeared as though the actor really took the time to know his character, being that it was very easy to understand who Tony was right when he took his first steps on stage. The actor paid attention to:
  1. Body Language
  • Because the setting is in Brooklyn, Tony Manero had a “Brooklyn strut”. This strut was supposed to give off the feeling of superiority amongst others on the streets of Brooklyn.
  • His confidence showed a lot by his facial expression, scrunching up his facing to make it look like he was really tough and had to look really hard in order to see anyone because he was so much grander than others.
2. Voice
  • In order to stay true to character, the actor took the time to perfect his Brooklyn accent.
  • His words usually curved upwards at the end of each phrase, making it sound like he was questioning other people's comments even when their comments were as simple as, “Hi Tony!”.
The Stage Crew also did very well. It seemed as though a lot of time was put into the details of scenes. Beach scene location looked different from the other:
1. Tony's house
  • Dining room contained a fireplace, pictures of him and his family, food on the table
  • Bedroom contained a bed, a closet, tons of pictures with Tonys’ interest on the closet doors.
2. The Dance Club
  • Gold Streamers lining a against the back wall
  • Disco Lights
  • A fancy club sign
           3. The Highway
  • Highway railing
  • The height of the highway was very impressive to me. This was a relatively big stage, but even still, a theater being able to play with so many stage levels was very exciting to see.
The Costuming was fantastic. A large amount of scene time takes place at the dance club. In order to match the fun feel of the club, actors were dressed vibrant, bold colors. Vibrant red dresses and neon blue shirts. Because the costuming was so fun, it made the audience feel emotions of excitement which filled the dance club scenes, helping the actors feel that emotion as well.
Saturday Night Fever was a very fun performance. The emphasis on detail throughout the performance really made the audience's experience great. What I’ve learned from watching Saturday Night Fever this summer can be concluded as three things:
  1. An actor needs to know his character inside and out
  2. The way the stage is set up in a scene will reflect how and what the audience feels when watching
  3. Costuming can not only help with time period and location, but also emotion.
One must truly dive into the story before truly understanding how to present the piece to where both the actor and the audience will feel something.

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