BUTTERFLY by Ramesh Meyyappan

“The butterfly effect“

Reviewer: Walter Chan
Performance: 17 July 2014

Ramesh Meyyappan presents an astounding visual treat and captures audiences’ hearts with his latest offering, Butterfly.

(From left to right) Ashley Smith, Ramesh Meyyappan and Martin McCormick in Butterfly. Photograph: Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay

As the house lights came on after the performance, I stole a quick glance among the members of the audience, and saw several of them dabbing away at their eyes with tissue paper. Quite a feat for a piece of physical theatre performed without words.

Yes, no words.

Acclaimed actor-writer-director Ramesh Meyyappan (who is deaf) returns to the Singapore stage with Butterfly, an adaptation of John Luther Long’s short story Madame Butterfly. In this play, a kitemaker, Butterfly, (Smith) is torn between two lovers: a customer (McCormick) and a butterfly collector (Meyyappan), and ironically ends up being torn apart by both of them.

As usual, Meyyappan’s visual style of performance does not disappoint. A number of techniques, including mime, puppetry, shadows and electronics, are deployed to tell the story with great effect. The vivacity of the choreography ensured that the momentum of the performance never wavered for a single second, which was also helped in part by Meyyappan’s concise script.

One technique I found interesting was the clever interweaving of different styles of narration together, which enabled the story to stay dynamic through the depiction of dream sequences. A recurring motif of a palm-sized puppet of Meyyappan’s character hiking up the mountain that was Butterfly’s sleeping body was simple in its execution, yet became deeply ingrained in my mind after the performance had ended, simply because it was so beautifully haunting.

The surprise star of the night, however, was Smith as the titular Butterfly. The metamorphosis of her character does not have a happy ending: going from the unbridled joy of freedom, the passion of falling in love, the desolation of being spurned by both lovers, to the despair of insanity. Keep in mind that she had no words upon which to help her emote, and you understand the difficulty of the task. Nevertheless, she came through with a spellbinding performance.

Kudos must also go to the Scottish team that supported the Glasgow-based Meyyappan for this touring production. While the lighting and the sound managed to carry the performance competently, the set consistently wowed the audiences with its many transformations onstage. The magic of evoking a mother’s womb, climbing a mountain, and the insanity of imagining dead butterflies thrashing about wildly in their glass bottles, are some of the things you can expect from this show.

Indeed, for a show without words, this review can only approximate the visual poetry of Meyyappan’s vision. For discerning audiences who have even the slightest interest for an alternative theatre experience – this show is a must-see.