“Mergers & Accusations”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 13 April 2019

Mergers and Accusations was written by Eleanor Wong in 1993, when it made its mark on the Singapore’s theatre scene. This play has been re-staged at least three times before (by Theatreworks in 1993, Wild Rice in 2003, and Esplanade Presents: The Studios in 2015). Considering the limited space and resources that the local theatre scene has, one must wonder what is so special about this play and whether it deserves its numerous restagings.

The title of the play alludes to both its lawyerly setting and the precarious and painful process of negotiation within intimate relationships. Lawyers Ellen Toh (Oon Shu An) and Jonathan (Shane Mardjuki) are best friends and colleagues at a big and successful law firm. Ellen is sharp-tongued, with a hard edge that she developed after years of hiding her true identity as a lesbian. Jonathan is love-sick, flawed by charming. The pair, who are semi-sexually attracted but not in love, decide to get married. Things go well for a while, until Ellen meets her soulmate – Leslie the Lesbian Lawyer from London (Nessa Anwar) – and things unravel.

The play, with its fast-paced dialogue and narrative, feels breathless and sexy. However, some elements in this production feel overdone and cringy, like the strange heavy breathing sounds that are used during scene transitions.

Nessa falters with her inconsistent and jarring British accent, and her character does not develop beyond her namesake. Furthermore, Leslie and Ellen’s relationship becomes flattened by the stereotypical butch-femme dynamic. While their attraction and connection is convincing, their relationship is not particularly compelling in and of itself. Thus, this portrayal ends up trivilialising the love story between Leslie and Ellen, reducing it to the lesbian relationship that disrupts the traditional heterosexual family unit.

By the end of the play, I am still not entirely convinced that the play truly deserves yet another restaging. The main things that made Mergers and Accusations stand out in the 1990s were its strong LGBT themes and complex portrayal of gay characters. The same can’t be said for this rendition of the play, as these portrayals fall flat.

“this is my grandfather’s road…”

Reviewer: Idelle Yee
Performance: 20 April 2019

As a child born and raised in Singapore, this reviewer grew up quite familiar with this common reprimand for any kind of unruly behaviour: “eh you think this is your grandfather’s road ah!” This is not a claim to fame just anyone could make, but Neo Kim Seng certainly can: his grandfather was businessman Neo Pee Teck, for whom Neo Pee Teck Lane is named.

For multidisciplinary practitioner Kim Seng, My Grandfather’s Road is clearly a painstakingly assembled labour of love. The original street sign, revealed in the performance to have been bid for with much strategising in a 2003 auction, hangs in the entrance to the Esplanade Theatre Studio. Monochrome images, seemingly taken from the pages of beloved old haunts, family vacations and neighbours are projected on screens at appropriate junctures, accompanied by affectionate accounts of childhood exploits and idiosyncrasies.

This iteration of My Grandfather’s Road sees two different versions being staged, one in English and the other in Cantonese. This particular Sunday afternoon performance, featuring Tan Cher Kian as the voice of Neo Kim Seng himself and Gary Tang as an unnamed third-person narrator character, is in Cantonese. Tang cuts a much stronger figure in terms of stage presence and command of the stage. His control of speech and body gestures as he seamlessly plays different characters causes him to somewhat overshadow Tan’s performance. Interestingly, this results in the character of Kim Seng and the stories he tells in the first person being somewhat less convincing than those that Tang’s third-person narrator tells on Kim Seng’s behalf. Whether intended by the production or otherwise, it seems as though the character of Kim Seng requires a third-person narrator to navigate this overwhelming mess of memory, and that this externalised figure is able to access and comment on these memories with greater directness and vividity.

The audience is largely silver-haired and Cantonese-speaking. Combined with the thrust stage set-up of the studio, the conversational manner of speech employed by the actors and the humming of cicadas, one feels like a child sitting in a black-and-white Neo Pee Teck Lane, listening to an “old grandfather story” told by an alleyway elder. I do not speak Cantonese as fluently I would like to, so I have invited my father, a native Cantonese speaker from the same generation as Kim Seng, to watch with me. The response from him, as well as most of the audience, seems to be overwhelming in its resonance – whether that’s lovingly recounted tales of neighbours with politically incorrect nicknames (“Black Skin” for a dark-skinned neighbour, for instance), the places being erased, or the land and its fast-forgotten names.

My father tells me as we leave the theatre that theirs is a displaced generation, who lost their roots to the land through systemic resettlements and demolishment; there is nothing physical to hold on to. My Grandfather’s Road responds in conversation: but there are still the stories your grandfather told you. On the train ride home, I sense in my fast-ageing father a renewed determination to do just so: one cannot always hold on to the land, but one can tell its stories.

“Rubber Girl on the loose”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 30 March 2019

The title Rubber Girl on the loose is a curious one. Who or what is a rubber girl? Can a person be made of rubber? What does it mean to have a rubber-like personality? This is my first encounter with a Cake Theatrics production, and I’m not sure what to expect based on the image conjured by the title.

The Rubber Girl, performed by Sarah Chaffey, soon makes an appearance. She is Antigone, a young woman from Thebes who defies her uncle and ruler Creon’s law to bury her brother Polynices. She walks around the space, using her body to bend and stretch a large rubber band. She is as strong and elastic as this rubber band.

This elasticity – its anxiety-inducing stretch and release – permeates the rest of this atmosphere, exciting, and tiring two-hour piece. For the first half of the performance, I am intrigued by the creativity of the stagecraft and direction. However, the sheer number of different elements occurring on the stage overwhelms me after a while, and ends up hindering my experience.

There are some elements that enhanced the piece. In one scene, a naked body lying on the side of the stage, covered with dirt, rises. This is Polynices, played truthfully and hauntingly by Nicholas Tee, and he tells us about his curse to roam as a spirit. In another scene, the projector beams a window into the underworld onto the screen, where we see the blind prophet Tiresias, and Polynices’ parents, Jocasta and Oedipus. The image of Oedipus, portrayed by Edith Podesta with blood stains on a cloth wrapped around her head where her eyes were, ingrains itself in my memory. There is an apt comparison to be drawn between the god-like realm and the worlds that we access through our computer screens –they seem distant, but are in actuality deeply entwined with our lives.

However, there are other elements that feel either excessive or underutilized. The live musician, Berlin-based Matthias Engler, is tangential at best and distracting at worst. And while West Papuan dancer Darlane Litaay’s beautiful and precise physical movement brings up the deep psychical drama, we are never fully given the space to appreciate his craft or his role, as his subtle performance is usually overshadowed by all the other loud elements in the piece.

Overall, Rubber Girl on the loose is an exciting rendition of the classic tragedy, Antigone, especially as it attempts to use various elements to express the unspoken tension that drives the piece. It is pity that they do not tie in together cohesively in the end. Instead, it floats in the shadow of the promises of what it could have been, just like Polynices’ restless ghost.

“One Day We’ll Arrive at the Big House”

Reviewer: Edward Eng
Performance: 4 April 2019

On the back of Cake’s riotous examination of schoolyard power in Rubber Girl on the loose, The Studios now desaturates its space to bring us another study of power, this time in the earthy settings of race and the postcolonial.

But while this take on race/power is as deeply aestheticised and beautiful as any other, it is most obviously limited by its reprisal of the same devices and arguments found in recent plays and films. Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai’s Building a Character, Grace Kalaiselvi’s Goddess of Words and Sharon Frese’s Ayer Hitam all collide in this play, but nothing really new comes out of it.

Miss British is a muddy poem. Director Felipe Cervera combines live cinema, archive, personal story and rhythm to suggest how the issue of race is shaped by our own biases, as well as the biases of every author in history.

It also delves very much into the idea of jaggedness. So when Dorai, Kalaiselvi and Frese are dancing to the line, “white, brown and black”, we are aware that each iteration of the lyric is greatly inflected by the preceding scene: for instance, Dorai’s sobering encounter with a racist in the UK, or Kalaiselvi’s giggly encounter with a Sri Lankan man who asks her out.

There is live cinema, which reflects the three women’s faces on large screens. The cameras are a multi-faceted device: they make visible the women for the first time, and capture them re-performing historical tableaus with the passion of hindsight. But more than aiding reflection, they also intervene in the theatrical space, overlaying text quoted from post-colonial theory onto the images.

The scenes themselves are subtle and yet powerful – the most poignant being the incident of a washerwoman who is abused by her colonial master, played once each by the three actors. Another touching segment is the barren ritual of tea being served, whilst an infant is held by a nearby surrogate.

Which leads me to question how a theatre of struggle is felt. By some standard of judgement, Miss British is quite excellent. It is hauntingly beautiful and while not too inventive, it depicts its subject well and appropriately. At the end of the day, we want to see the three women win. Or as one character says, “arrive at the big house.”

But having seen the agency and urgent hurt in other productions that take a similar approach, there is a ‘liveness’ that Miss British is missing. Perhaps it comes from the sense of curation arising from the mishmash of theatre and live cinema. Or from the straightforwardness of the answer that racism and colonialism are always awful. Either way, I left the theatre feeling slightly empty.

“Braving a Raging Storm“

Reviewer: Lee Shu Yu 
Performance: 26 April 2018

Edith Podesta’s Leda and the Rage impresses with its staging of sexual violence and trauma. Seen in the light of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, this performance is vital viewing.

Leda and the Rage plunges face first into grimy detail. The play’s opening frame is set as a university module about trauma in art and literature. Podesta plays the lecturer, herself coping with a dark past, while Jeremiah Choy plays her therapist. As the two flit from mythology to memory on stage, shadow-interpreters Jun An and Amirah Osman complete the picture.

The title comes from a story in Greek Mythology, where young Leda is raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. The story is often romanticised as a ‘seduction’.  In this performance, the lecturer invokes Suzanna, Daphne, Philomela who suffer the same fate. I am immediately reminded that for all these mythological names that are known, so many more real names go unheard.

Fact and fiction bleed into each other. The dramatic sequences are spliced with statistics and rape apologist assertions. From rape culture, to childhood trauma and terrorism, the audience is never once allowed to forget the extent of the objectification and violence.

There is no breathing room between fragments as the audience is herded along the recesses of the survivor’s mind. The show is an hour and a half of claustrophobia, with all the frenzied haziness and excruciating detail of nightmares.

Despite the horror, Leda and the Rage remains tragically beautiful.

Podesta’s usual verbosity is effective. Her spoken word captures the sensation of a lump in one’s throat that finally spits back at the patriarchy. Even so, the words are a salve and an ode to survivors; it is equal parts formidable and gut-wrenching.

Besides making the play more accessible, the two shadow-interpreters from the Singapore Association of the Deaf are themselves stage players. The corporeal beauty of the sign language is at the forefront. This extra layer of stage business adds commentary about the dislocation of mind, body and experience.

At times, Choy sounds hesitant and lacks the lyricism needed for the text, but the performers are well-supported by the design. The grey set resembles a tomb, its various catches and transformations remind one of a pocket knife. This fortress is often shaken by uncanny multimedia, sound and lighting design and I constantly feel like I am clinging on to driftwood in open waters.

As the lights fade out on the last scene, the audience’s discomfort and exhaustion is palpable; one must take a breath to contemplate the weight of the work.

All things considered, Leda and the Rage is accomplished, fierce and constructive. By presenting solutions in the play and beyond – a post-show dialogue with relevant professionals and an information sheet about sexual violence – Leda and the Rage does not just promise a night of thoughtful theatre, but attempts to rattle the shackles of indifference that paralyses us as a society.

“True, but not clear“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 12 April 2018

The premise: Risa (played by Ellison Tan), a troubled young civil servant who has lost her job, recounts her story over a series of visits to a therapist. We learn about her complex love-hate relationship with her grandmother and parents, her struggles in coming to terms with being religious and lesbian, and the beauty and sadness of her first relationship.

The story itself had the potential to be moving. But because the subject matter has by now become a bit of a clichéd trope, I imagine it is rather difficult to write about it in a novel way, or one that encourages people to think differently about it. I am trying to say something true does try earnestly to say something true, but perhaps too earnestly.

The text of the monologue does not help its case, at times being witty or poetic to the point of being unbelievable. I would perhaps have bought it as the text of a novel or short story, but not as realistic spoken dialogue between a woman and her therapist.

Even more mystifying is the randomness of the staging elements, which do not coherently support each other. Near the beginning, in the midst of Risa recounting how she lost her job, the sound of elevator announcements going from floor to floor plays in the background. This effect is disjunctive because it appears arbitrary. It has little relationship to what Risa is saying (apart from perhaps the obvious link to an office environment), and ends up overpowering the stage action.

Indeed, the sound and music is jarring throughout the play. Thought has clearly been given to working with the technical capacities of the venue, as the sound comes from particular speakers in the room at different points. However, there does not seem to be a clear reason for this particularity, and overall the levels of background music tend to overwhelm Tan’s speech.

Over the course of the monologue, Risa moves between two clearly separate stage areas – an armchair upstage centre, and a sofa downstage right. Although the armchair appears to demarcate the therapist’s office, that isn’t always the case. A bicycle is placed downstage left, never used and shrouded in darkness most of the time. Risa never approaches that part of the stage. She only mentions a bicycle incident briefly, near the end of the play. It is, quite frankly, a struggle to make sense of all this.

Saying something true is just a first step. As with all new works, several rounds of remoulding and chipping at it would be needed to eventually settle into a piece that says something clear.

“In the Silence of Your Heart“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 5 April 2018

I arrive half an hour early at the Esplanade Theatre Studio, heeding the advisory that has been sent in advance to audience members. Past the door and the usual bag checks, I see a big rack full of chunky black headphones neatly arranged in rows. As we (the first few audience members) approach, the ushers start handing out headphones. The process is unhurried; I fiddle briefly with the volume knob and adjust the headphones to a comfortable position.

After a while, we are finally invited into the theatre space. The performance space encompasses almost the whole floor area of the Theatre Studio, and I make my way gingerly across the set, slightly conscious that I am intruding into that world. The floor is covered with a layer of wood, with very low wooden stools scattered about, and benches running around the perimeter of the space. I select a stool and make myself comfortable.

The lights dim. Through the headphones, the voice of a Man narrates his story – we are told in the synopsis that this is Thian, an ex-politician who has been paralysed for 13 years. His voice melds seamlessly with the soundscape that is delivered through the house speakers, as well as the live, diegetic sound from actions happening on stage. This experience is intriguing, but the full brilliance of the performance is something that I realise gradually, rather like the process of savouring good tea.

Three different times/spaces are existing simultaneously: first, the narrative inside the Man’s head; second, the action that is seen on stage, played out by Jalyn Han as the Woman and Tan Hui Er as the Girl; and third, the real time and space that the audience inhabits. Through the Man’s voice we are privy to detailed observations about his daily life – including straightforward, humorous comments about bodily functions – and his larger life story marked by the pain of losing a daughter at a young age. On stage we see a day in the life of the Woman – Thian’s wife – as she goes about her daily rituals as caregiver, dramatised in arresting, determined movements.

The blurring of boundaries between the three time-spaces is skilfully achieved through the sound and the overall staging. The power of a phenomenological experience lies in simply being there and embracing it. When the Woman makes a cup of coffee and leaves it on the table, I am mesmerised by the clear wisps of steam unfurling in the sharp light of the theatre. When she cooks mee sua (wheat noodles) for lunch, the smell wafts over and makes me hungry.

By the end of the performance, my back is aching from sitting on the floor. But this does not make me impatient, captivated as I am by the Man’s internal monologue and what he sees/we see.

It does not escape me that this opens another door into the experience of the Man – if I feel uncomfortable sitting still for one and a half hours, what must it be like to be deprived of one’s capacities of movement and speech for 13 years?

“楼上的Uncle Ismail”

Reviewer: Liu Chang | 刘畅
Performance: 19 March 2017

直到剧终，Uncle Ismail也没有走下他虚拟的楼梯。甚至连他本人也几乎成了抽象的存在。

但他又是那样强大，阴影一样覆盖了剧中男女二人20年之久。

他的楼梯通向的不是《简·爱》的阁楼，尽管他的楼上可能也囚禁着一个隐形的疯子。这个楼上不代表绝望和幽闭，相反，那里是家庭权力的核心，他在那里操控了楼下的悲喜。而楼下是客厅、餐厅和厨房，是这个家庭非权力中心（女主角Habiba）和外来者（男主角Eric）的活动范围——后者甜蜜的不伦之恋都是在客厅和厨房发生的，不得登堂入室。

《简·爱》中似乎烧死了疯女人才有幸福的结局可言，而此剧里Uncle Ismail要如何走下他的楼梯才能带给男女主角快乐——本质上的快乐？在Ismail的社会外表（成功的地毯商，热爱孩子的父亲，和圣徒有着相同的名字）映衬下，Habiba和Eric更显得是这个社会的边缘人：由于婚姻而改信真主的华人女性（九年剧场在新加坡英语剧作家Haresh Sharma原著上对女主角身份做出的改编）和有同性之爱倾向、幼年受性虐的男性，是否有人真正关心他们的快乐呢？他们的快乐是否就系在Ismail身上？

男主角Eric（剧场新秀温文伟）人物舞台塑造是成功的，但剧本所限，人物的爱与恨并没有超越同类作品。他所享有过的快乐是邪恶的，他要追求的快乐是较难实现的。Uncle Ismail对他的感情中想必是感官刺激多于真情，即使Uncle Ismail放下社会身份与之在一起，也难“有情人终成眷属”。恨与复仇恐怕永远是他们之间快乐下隐藏的火山口。即使复仇成功，Ismail走下楼梯受到法律的制裁，Eric也依然是受伤者，无法真正快乐起来。所以Eric最好的也最无奈的结局就是得到对方的道歉后离开。

相对之下，女主角Habiba（资深演员骆明珠）的人物塑造戏剧张力同时收放自如，结合剧本，Habiba的形象是立体的，成功的，充满了人性矛盾的。

Habiba享有和追求的快乐是更简单也更复杂的，它夹在世俗和精神世界之间。说它简单，她有法律对婚姻的保障，她助Ismail完成了生育子嗣的俗世任务；她有信仰做精神家园，她口中漂亮的好人Ismail几乎就等同于伊斯兰圣经中那个虔诚伟大的信徒。说它复杂，她比谁都明白自己尴尬的身份和地位，Ismail身心俱难属于她。但她是一个婚内长期陷入矛盾却能自得其乐其所的女性，集善良、洞察与智慧、恬退隐忍、自欺、对丈夫的爱与（愚）忠、甚至些许自私等心态与品质为一身。也许就是这种简单与复杂，Habiba一直都勤于思考什么是快乐，并愿意与人分享和讨论，她在寻找心灵上的支持和麻痹，因为她明白Ismail无法给她真正的快乐，她所得只是一种他人眼中的表面意义上的快乐。

20年前，Ismail也曾走下过他的楼梯，以快乐之名无情而邪恶地玩弄了他们两个。

然而，在这场邪恶之乐中，Habiba是受害者，又是Uncle  Ismail的同谋，可能默许他对Eric的性行为要比看丈夫玩弄洛丽塔们更快乐些。Eric是她的情敌，是她表明上稳固的家庭的威胁者与复仇者；而她又要与Eric并肩而战，为着他们共同热爱的Uncle Ismail的背叛。同时她坚定地相信，Eric不应该既享受了邪恶之乐，又以伦理之名寻仇，那不符合她对快乐的理解。

剧终时刻，她断然蜕下代表了伊斯兰宗教的围巾和头套，以一个她最本原的华人身份和Eric拥抱告别。这拥抱有着太多的含义，它有忏悔（忏悔她没有能力或者意志去保护一个10岁的孩子，忏悔她出于自私等目的阻止了30岁的青年讨回公道），它是发自内心感情上的和解，带着祝福，它安慰那个受伤的孩子、也暗示着从此不欢迎他再来打扰。

一曲《一生何求》唱毕，在我们的想象中，Habiba大抵会继续做一名虔诚的伊斯兰信徒和好妻子，跟着丈夫去朝拜，化解这场磨难，去询问真主所谓快乐。她会将此行关于快乐的所悟教给学校的孩子们，并继续热爱楼上那心猿意马的Uncle Ismail。

《突破生命的局限，超越时空的约束》

Reviewer: Neo Hai Bin | 梁海彬
Performance: 26 March 2017

倘若你将死去，你会选择怎么死，你临死前会选择过什么样的生活？

导演罗子涵在2017年重新演绎1999年《周丰林的独白》，通过录影、摄影和投影，让原本线性的时间呈现不一样的可能性。

导演在剧场内放映当年的舞台演出，让观众在此时感受当时的演出—— 这是摄影的传统功能，也是观众熟悉的方式。

当演员（许优美）演绎《周》的原文时，几乎全程对着镜头演出—— 摄影的“即时作用”是这个时代独有的影视功能，观众于是在此时观看即时的演出。

观众在看即时演出时，也能够意识到，此时的演出被正在记录下来。此刻即永恒—— 过去与现在都被保存，投射到未知的未来。

“时间”在罗子涵的演出中变得非常重要。我们不断被提醒“当年”与“现在”之间的距离。1999年的社会，到了2017年是否有改变？改变了多少？

周丰林以有限的生命，为一整代的艾滋病患者努力；罗子涵以录影的保存功能，让周丰林的故事有超越时空的可能性，让此时的我们有机会体验当年舞台演出的震撼性。

观看 ”With/Out”，观众经历了一趟时光之旅。

观众固然必须通过科技和荧幕去穿越时光，但是导演也安排了演员许优美在舞台穿梭。当演员用此时的肉身承载当年的故事，我们看到了一种更原始、更触动心灵的保存方式。

这是剧场的精髓—— 用一个个短暂易逝的肉身承载故事，让故事有延续性生命的可能。

戏末，演员邀请观众点亮一根根的蜡烛。在黑暗的剧场里，我们看见火光慢慢传到每一根蜡烛上，恰如演员通过身体把故事传到了现场每一个观众心里。

2017年的”With/Out”，罗子涵看似在剧场破格，其实是延续了剧场的本质：以有限触碰无限，以精神超越肉体。导演成功让身处不同时空的生命相遇，激发了无限的剧场可能性。