“Affections”

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 6 December 2019

Inspired by Chuck Mee’s Big Love and Limonade Tous les Jours, The Assembly Point’s debut show Affections is an exploration of the many facets of love. Told through three interwoven narratives, the show delves deeper into the common tropes that accompany romance. As the show’s synopsis puts it:

Another love song tops the charts.

Another fling in a foreign land.

Another bout of cold feet.

To this end, the script and characters strike a balance between the comedic triviality and poignancy of love. The initial tone of the production weighs more heavily on the former. The play opens explosively, with pop star “V” (Tia Guttensohn) strutting down a runway-cum-stage, lip-syncing passionately to a medley of love songs. It is clear that the play’s foremost intention is to delight its audience, cemented when Yaya (Fatin Syahirah) and Andrew (Jeramy Lim) rush into the room, trailing clothes.

A sparse and modest production lavish only in the smorgasbord of balloons at the room’s head, it is still clearly a labour of love, well-rehearsed and carefully produced. Cues are executed perfectly and in very narrow windows of time, as actors emerged from different doors in impressive costume changes with nary a hair out of place.

Certain narratives are more compelling than others. With V’s monologues, and the force of her own bubbly, idealistic character, the audience becomes invested; with the “cold feet” narrative, we become reminded of our own hesitations and anxiety when it comes to the uncertainty of loving and being loved back. The latter is bolstered also by a pair of riotous bridesmaids who are a perfect and comedic chorus to the waxing bride, played by Jelaine Ng.

However, the “fling in Bali” storyline seems slightly contrived. Tokenistic attributions and the temptation to saturate the characters with other symbolism – such as the implication of class on gender roles or the divide between lovers from “modern” versus “provincial” backgrounds – muddy an otherwise elegant argument about the temporal nature of love.

But even with the core threads of the narratives, it is the play’s explorations of other non-romantic strands of love, or “affection”, that are more compelling to me. The audience enjoyed particularly the loud, frank sisterhood shared by bride and bridesmaids, speaking openly of exes and bad choices. Another timely and more cerebral “affection” explored is the damaging aspects of fan culture – when affection turns to obsession – that V suffers as a result of her meteoric popularity. Love is, at every turn, in every form, a double-edged sword that brings as much pain as joy.

With an organisational ethos of anchoring their theatre practice on the power of collaboration, the actors indeed shine brightest when they could play off each other. Hinging on the cast’s effervescent energy, the play is a champagne fizz delight, and the fluidity of the actors within make it a joy to watch.

“Human, After All”

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 1 August 2019

The energy, from the first, is dazzling. Audience members step into what looks uncannily like a miniature National Day Parade, waving paper flags while red-clad youths shimmy and strut across the stage. Even the arrangement of the seats is coliseum-like, circling the heart of the stage: a minimalist void deck, which transforms over the course of the performance from gathering spot, to classroom, to Malayan kampong. This transformation re-impresses the point: this place is what you make it to be.

The Community Theatre’s Block Party is a series of vignettes, strung together by the overarching question of what community is. Sometimes uproariously funny, at other times painfully raw, the polish of the performances belies the experience of its young and talented cast. By looking behind the closed walls of the eponymous blocks and tunneling into the hearts of our ubiquitous HDBs, the work gives us access to another kind of reality altogether.

In a particularly wrenching scene, we see a father separated from his daughter by officers patrolling the void deck of their flat. Digging through some refuse, he unearths a parang, and relives in a rush a moment of remembered glory and emancipation. Before the kampongs of the city closed and our resident population was walled into blocks and districts and regions, he says, we were people of the land. The stage darkens; a single spotlight shines on him. But to the policemen watching, he is only a man holding a sharp, unsheathed knife with his small daughter watching on. The criticism is clear: there is always more to every story, something those who do not care for context will never be able to fully understand.

Moments of empowerment and purpose in the play are bookended by scenes showcasing the systemic shackles that keep poverty and disparity in place. Another striking scene is the more artistic exploration of the double-bind of getting “help” in Singapore. With lighting drenching the stage in National Day-red, a sharply-worded song begins to play as a couple seeks “help” from figures representing a mode or stage of assistance in Singaporean society. Here, the musicality of the production serves to emphasise the rote and routine nature of the process of receiving aid. At each juncture, they are asked to lower expectations, or told to let go of their dreams altogether. Echoing our society’s more recent conversations, the audience is left to consider: what is the price of dignity?

Throbbing beneath the cheer and dazzle of the production is the anger. But it isn’t the anger of resignation or capitulation – it is an anger that pushes, propels, and progresses. And while Block Party is unflinching in its crystallization of its cast’s experiences, it is still a party. The production challenges and celebrates community in a breath, encapsulating well the complex relationship with the reality of Singapore as a place they (and we) call home. What makes a community? What builds a home? It might be something we might have the power to create, block by block.

(Reviewer’s note: I didn’t want to write too much on The Community Theatre’s background in the body of the review itself because I wanted my focus to be on the power of the production’s technicality as separate from its social mission. But it is definitely an amazing project – please do check them out!)

“The Place where there is No Darkness”

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 22 August 2019

Performed by the Singapore Repertory Theatre’s The Young Company as part of its graduation showcase, 1984 is a demanding and ambitious piece that showcases the rigorous training and range of its cast. Much like the novel, the play swings from poles: spanning horror to humour, love to hatred.

At its heart is Winston Smith (Marwyn Ho), the protagonist and thought-criminal brought to mise-en-scène trial before Big Brother. In contrast to the starched, dark jumpsuits of the other Citizens, Winston is dressed in baggy white, with his hair shorn off, despondent. At the point where the play begins, he has been separated from his lover and co-conspirator, Julia. His confession unspools with his found diary as basis; two of the Citizens act it out, telling the story of how Winston and Julia met, and fell in love.

The costuming is sophisticated: each cast member is pin-neat with slicked hair and standard-issue combat boots. The set is just as thoughtful. The focal point of the stage is the screen at the back. The modular set pieces, sliding in and out to bring the audience from room to room, preserve a cutout for the pinhole of Big Brother’s eye to peer through. That said, some of these design elements end up not working so well in practice. For instance, the screen is often blocked by the cast, who periodically huddle in front it as they mouth Big Brother’s creed, eyes fixated on the apparent image that some of the audience is thus unable to see.

Good ideas are also sometimes not executed to their largest extent, as in the garbled pre-performance message that fails to conjure Orwellian sentiment over the lo-fi crackle of too much static.

But the cast shines as an ensemble. Monologues can be slightly stilted and emotionally effusive declarations. Antagonists can sometimes come across as thuggish and flatly menacing. But in moments where they play off and build upon each other, the cast is a well-oiled combination of moving parts – their chemistry is charming and much-needed in a production as heavy as 1984. The audience unhitches a breath as M. Shankari’s Mr. Parsons and Amalia Thoumire’s Syme exchange comedic barbs with a more innocent Winston. We sigh as Shaik Nazray and Tiara Yap fall for each other as faux Winston and Julia, all the while tamping down the creeping dread of Winston’s reality and future as he watches from the stage foreground. As an ensemble, the cast is a crystallization of manic, frenetic energy, chilling as they stare into the middle distance, looking at an unseen Big Brother tucked within the audience.

As the cast take their last bows as part of The Young Company, I look forward to seeing them in productions elsewhere – bringing with them their dedication, sense of timing, and a little bit of that 1984 fanaticism.

“Always Every Time: transcending language, gender, time”

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 28 March 2019

Always Every Time is an amalgamation of the names of its double-billed performances, Tiap Kali Aku… (“Every Time I…”) and <<我在你左右>> (“Always on my Mind”). Staged by Ground Z-0, an up-and-coming theatre collective devoted to the celebration of Singaporean narratives and multilingual theatre, Always Every Time makes an interesting decision to bring two seemingly disparate performances, told in two different languages, together.

Directed and written by Adib Kosnan, who performs the piece together with Saiful Amri, Every Time I… is a meditation on fatherhood that takes place in the ponderous 20 minutes before Saiful’s child is born. Saiful’s character wonders at the importance of fatherhood – and whether he can even become a father without having one of his own to emulate. Adib provides a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes challenging backdrop to Saiful’s brooding with a colourful rotisserie of characters.

Always on my Mind… features Liow Shi Suen and Lina Yu as a mother-daughter duo in another imaginary space: a metaphysical bus interchange, where Liow has been given three chances to board a specific bus. As the buses come and go, the exchange gets increasingly heated as Liow and Yu try to navigate a past rife with the limited time they have left.

I appreciate the intellectual challenge both plays offer, as they invited us to consider parent-child interactions – universal human experiences that transcend language, race, gender and time. The plays’ other similarities are also embedded quite elegantly in their structures, such as each narrative being hemmed tightly into finite amounts of time. In Every Time I… it is the 20-minute timer that counts Amri down to his child’s birth, and in Always on my Mind it is the three mysterious chances Liow is given to “board the bus”. The contrast of the universality of struggling parent-child relationships against the minute amount of time each protagonist is given to iron them out sharpens the performance’s sophisticated, collective argument about the complications that come in-hand with familial ties. This is what melds two distinct performances into one holistic production.

That said, the melodrama of Always on my Mind becomes almost corny against the minimalist musings of Every Time I… The former’s attempts to incorporate Chinese mythology and nostalgic golden age songs into the dramatic narrative results in a stilted and jarring storyline.

Beyond Every Time I…’s simplicity, which sought to show rather than tell, I also feel that more care was taken with the its stage direction and lighting sequences. Its final tableau is particularly striking, as Saiful faces away from the audience, and the harsh light throws his long shadow against the wall behind him. The Play Den at the Arts House is a challenging location to conduct a performance, being without a traditional stage and with the audience bordering three sides of the central performance space, but Every Time I… demonstrates what can be achieved with care: a performance that transforms into a shifting kaleidoscope, which changes from each angle and perspective.

“One Meenah, One Cheenah, One Singapore”

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 22 February 2019

Reprising its 2016 success, Meenah and Cheenah is uproariously navigates of Singapore’s murky ethnic waters with humour, flair and dizzyingly quick costume changes. Judee Tan and Siti Khalijah shine on stage as comic archetypes of the ‘meenah’ and ‘cheenah’, exploring racial identity in Singapore not only as independent quantities but also as a point of intersection. The thread that weaves through the narrative seam is the story of two childhood friends – one Malay, one Chinese – who grow up against a backdrop of familiar Singaporean settings and questions.

But make no mistake: Meenah and Cheenah’s first aim is to delight. From a show-stopping opening number that sets the ecstatic tone of the production, to wigs in every size and colour, to skits that dare to imagine and stretch everything from racial origin stories to multicultural afterlives – there is little that seems out-of-bounds. Social critique and commentary come only as by-products of gags that, on less winning personalities, could be hackneyed or overdone. Jokes that rely on more stale racial stereotypes still form the bulk of the production’s humour, but come creatively repackaged. For instance, Chinese miserliness follows into the afterlife in one scene, while anthropological definitions of the “meenah” and “cheenah” are explored through rather interactive PowerPoint “slides” in another.

Perhaps what is most enjoyable about Meenah and Cheenah is how it celebrates the local vernacular, a ‘quintessential Singaporean-ness’ that can generate a huge sense of camaraderie in its audience. The fourth wall is broken – not just explicitly, such as when Siti and Tan cheekily apologises to the audience for not casting a full CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others) spectrum, but also because the audience can see fragments of themselves onstage.

Meenah and Cheenah, ultimately, offers an example of how race can be explored and celebrated on the local stage – provided you have the magnetism, warmth, and comedic prowess of actors of Tan and Siti’s calibre to bring the show to life.

“precise purpose of being broken“

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 24 January 2019

Restaged for the M1 Fringe Festival, Koh Wan Ching’s precise purpose of being broken is an experimental and ambitious piece that pushes the boundaries of conventional manifestations of space and movement. Like a string of mismatched pearls, the piece consists of a series of vignettes taken from Haresh Sharma’s work, each more bewildering and obscure than the last. For those in want of strong, coherent narratives, look further afield: this piece is a challenging one, for artist and audience alike. Even the overarching themes that might have drawn all the disparate scenes together seem gossamer-thin.

The play begins in a shocking, nightmarish sequence where a grotesquely-masked actor levels accusations at the audience from a second-floor balcony. Later, other actors would dash in and out of different doors, and reappear on balconies and from side entrances, with screams and ululations heralding their entry. It is clear that much thought has been given to how this piece can fill the multi-storey space of the Esplanade Annexe.

In fact, the artistic team harnesses the properties of this repurposed building so successfully that the space almost becomes another actor in itself. By building upon the long shadows thrown by the ill-situated pillars and making use of pockets of dark corners, the play induces discomfiture and anxiety. Within this pregnant darkness, the actors’ bodies contort and transform into ghosts and phantoms, funeral-marching figures, plastic-suffocated mermaids, or a son on death row.

The characters portrayed are individual compelling, with the dialogue of the final vignette between a death row inmate and his mother being especially moving. However, while the piece is a laudable showcase of each actor’s dynamic range, the multitude of characters ultimately end up morphing into an almost nonsensical cacophony of voices and stories, drowning out the poignancy of the piece. But morever, there are so many moving parts here – from the collection of disparate excerpts to the elasticity of each performer’s role, to the incorporation of voiceovers and music – that it unfortunately never reaches the emotional depth that it strives for.

“Private Parts”

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 3 November 2018

Directed by Beatrice Chia-Richmond, Private Parts features a star-studded cast, with familiar faces from screen and stage, including Jason Godfrey, Chua En Lai, Jo Tan and Shane Mardjuki, just to name a few. The pounding beats and rhythms, the neon disco lighting that illuminates the white, angled walls of the set fully celebrate the historical setting of this play: we are in the 1990s.

The play does not rely on the juxtaposition of awkward, gangling men in heels for humour, which speaks strongly to the talent and effort of its cast. Chua is in particularly fine form as Mirabella, toeing perfectly her combination of brassy confidence and brittle uncertainty. The other half of her love story is perhaps slightly more wooden – Godfrey’s Warren is wide-eyed and confused, and his lines are delivered with less ease than his counterparts onstage. However, it is clear all the actors onstage have sought to do their characters justice, and act with a sensitivity and grace that is the emotional heart of the production.

Indeed, much attention and care has been paid to each aspect of the play. From the slickly-designed set, with its revolving doors and hidden platforms, to the lighting design that manages to expand the borders of the stage, to the costuming and music in a stylish celebration of the ’90s. Private Parts is undoubtedly entertaining and well-executed production, though whether it represents the trans and LGBTQ+ community faithfully and accurately is perhaps another matter altogether.

It is clear that it was written in a different time, in which the trans community in Singapore was asserting visibility through flamboyance, colour, and sound – elements that clearly lent themselves to Chiang as a source of theatrical inspiration. Where in the 1990s Private Parts might have been groundbreaking in lending a voice to an unheard community on the theatrical stage, in the 21st century we now have the space to ask – is all representation good representation? And are all stories timeless? Ultimately, there is a politic to reproduction that Private Parts might prove an interesting entry point to, and that, unaddressed, might detract from appreciation of the play.

“She’s A Great Way to Fly”

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 26 October 2018

Presently, The Substation is a beached Singapore International Airlines (SIA) plane. Deconstructed cabins lead you from the orientating safety video into a series of trials that will test your worthiness of the vaunted SIA kebaya – many, if not most, little Singaporean girls’ (and maybe boys’!) dream. Topping off this interactive exhibit is Tan Kheng Hua’s She’s A Great Way to Fly, a multi-medium fizz of a production that blends dance, drama and song.

It is a delightfully bubbly operation, buoyed by the youth and pique of its cast. Shining particularly are the trio of young, giggling muses (Alysha Chandra, Audrey Teong and Shirin Keshvani). They blend and present perfectly the power and vulnerability of being young and lost as they deliver thoughtfully- and sharply-written monologues.  Perhaps part of the reason why the audience can’t take their eyes off them is because this confessional performance is less the donning of a persona than the unmaking of their own.

In many ways, She’s A Great Way to Fly is an unfinished argument with great critical potential, but it is a delightful one. This presentation showcases unique movement pieces that demonstrate the power and beauty of bodies that might stray beyond Singaporean Girl standards (Yen Then and ScRach MarcS), and songs that present another dimension to the conversation around this contested persona (written by Joie Tan, performed by Jana Ann and Joy Ng).

She’s A Great Way to Fly is less a critique of one of Singapore’s most entrenched symbols of glitz and glamour, the Singapore Girl, than a celebration of what it means to be a Singaporean girl (note the lowercase). It attempts to honour the plurality of the young female Singaporean experience with a similar plurality of medium, and is an entertaining melange of movement and sound driven by the talent and energy of its cast.

(Note: unfortunately, I didn’t see the film Sarah during the production due to technical difficulties!)