(a) Discuss the presentation and function of the character Angie, in the context of the play as a whole.
Angie is the daughter that Marlene rejected, and adopted by Joyce. She represents the consequences of the choices Marlene and Joyce made, one choosing career, while the latter choosing family. She is also the embodiment of the group of girls with no skills, no looks, no intelligence, and thus most likely, without a decent future. She serves to question the way society is progressing, whether people like her will have a place in the future they are making, and what will happen to those that do not fit.
Many signs indicate that Angie is “not going to make it”. Angie is awfully childish for someone her age and not particularly in the right frame of mind. When Marlene visited her a year ago, she acted like someone half her age, and tended to repeat after herself, saying the dress was “Beautiful. Beautiful” and that she “want(s) to wear it. I want to wear it” As for the perfume Joyce received from Marlene, she wants to “play wearing it like dressing up.” That is hardly becoming behavior for someone at the age of fifteen. Joyce certainly regards her as a young child, and not a teenager, that she is clumsy enough to “tip the whole bottle over (her)self and we’ll have you smelling all summer”. Joyce continues to patronize her, even a year later in act 2, asking if she “want(s) a choccy biccy”. This is further emphasized by the fact that her only friend is someone four years younger than her, who acted more maturely than she did. Kit has an ambition; aiming to be a nuclear physicist, while Angie is just lazing around having dropped out of school, and having delusions about making things move with her mind and hearing dead kittens. The real kicker is that Kit was not this mature a year back in act 3. She was like a child then, only thinking about going out to play, “coming out later?” and barging into other people’s homes “as if she lived...