Characters
There are three male characters in the play, they are:
- Joe Lukin, Julia's father, now in his sixties, never let his daughter go, convinced there are unanswered questions about her death;
- Andy Rollinson, generally considered Julia's student boyfriend, but unrequited admirer would be a more accurate description, now in his thirties;
- Ken Chase, a gentle unassuming man in his forties who offers his service as a psychic to Joe, later discovered to have once been the janitor in Julia's house.
There are also two voice parts in the play: one of Julia (or, more accurately, an actress imitating her voice speaking words the real Julia would probably never have said), and a sombre male voice talking about her death.
It was originally intended that Joe would be the central character of the story, but Ayckbourn eventually considered the central character of the story to be Julia herself. He also considered two other offstage characters - Dolly, Joe's late wife, and Kay, the woman Andy married instead of Julia - to be strong characters.
Read more about this topic: Haunting Julia
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The major men
That is different. They are characters beyond
Reality, composed thereof. They are
The fictive man created out of men.
They are men but artificial men.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)