“A Fiend’s Dairy”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 27 October 2019

A Fiend’s Diary by The Finger Players is a monologue depicting the inner world of a socially-isolated man (played by Oliver Chong). This man lives in an apartment alone, with only the frenzied words of his diary and the intermittent sounds (created by Darren Ng) of his body bumping against furniture to keep him company. Through the narrations in his diary, we come to understand how he sees the people that make up his social world.

The walls, floor, table of the protagonist’s room is covered with the text from the script. The orderly lines in which the words are written obscure the inherent chaos of the content. The man has just begun to reflect and grieve the passing of his closest kin – his mother. However, ‘grieving’ is an illusory word in this context, as this man does not exhibit or articulate his feelings of loss toward his mother in a way that may be recognisable as grieve. Or perhaps, this man is not grieving at all, as he spends the day of his mother’s funeral smoking and drinking with the funeral director. Over the course of the play, we see him in a range of situations that become increasingly absurd and questionable, from agreeing to marry a girl he does not care for, to ultimately a horrendous crime.

Despite how morally unredeemable the protagonist is, however, Chong’s performance still makes me feel sympathy towards him. At the court scene where the man is put on trial, I find myself taking both the side of the jury – who are horrified by his action and apathy – as well as the man, who is indignant that his defence is not truly taken into account because of the jury’s assumptions about him.

The radical empathy that this self-reflective play forces us to take on makes us question our own assumptions of morality.

“A Dream Under The Southern Bough: Reverie”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 6 April 2019

A Dream Under Southern Bough: Reverie by Toy Factory is the second installment of a planned trilogy commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), as part of an initiative to encourage more large-scale Singapore works. It is an ambitious project, as this is the first modern stage adaptation of Tang Xian Zu’s Ming Dynasty classic.

The play comprises two worlds. The first is earthly, where we meet Chun Yu Fen (Tang Shao Wei), a disgraced naval officer who spends his days drinking and womanising. The second is the dream world of the Ant Kingdom, where we are introduced to its inhabitants, including Princess Yao Fang (Jodi Chan), and the Ant Fairies who are sent to find her a suitable husband and future king.

I am amazed by how this production integrates these two vastly different worlds. In some ways, this can also serve as an analogy for modern-day life, as technology blurs the real and imagined, the public and the private.

That said, the plot becomes predictable once it is made known to us that Yao Fang wants to find a husband, as Chun Yu Fen is the obvious candidate. It does not help that the piece plods along at such a slow pace. Furthermore, the Mandarin dialogue tends to be quite metaphorical, which makes it difficult to match what’s being spoken onstage with the translated English surtitles. This causes me to become further disengaged from this world.

Another issue I have with the play is how female characters are portrayed. While the Ant Fairies are meant to be flirtatious and feminine characters, the way they flirt with each other soon becomes grating and disingenuous, while also feeding into the male gaze. Since this is supposed to be a contemporary adaptation, it begs the question of whether such out-dated depictions still deserve a place on today’s stage.

Ultimately, though, this play is an ambitious attempt to reimagine a dream world from the past in a contemporary setting.

“A play where no love triumphs”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 6 April 2019

Secret Love in Peach Blossom is a disorienting play. Written by Stan Lai, it has several layers of narrative. For one thing, there are two plays occurring simultaneously: Secret Love and Peach Blossom Land. For another – and on a more meta level – we are really watching the rehearsals of both plays, making this two-plays-within-a-play.

Secret Love is about a dying man who wishes to reconnect with his one true love. He was separated from her during the China-Taiwan split in 1949, and they never had the chance to live out their love story or even say goodbye. Motivated by his impending death, he puts up a newspaper advertisement searching for the girl, despite being married to a loyal, caregiving wife.

Peach Blossom Land, meanwhile, is a comedy set in the Qin dynasty that is centered on a hapless, drunkard husband. His dissatisfied wife is having an affair, which he is blissfully unaware of. One day, he happens to wander into a utopian land where the occupants – who ‘coincidentally’ look exactly like his wife and her lover – spend their days catching butterflies and not being frustrated.

These plays are forced into the same rehearsal space as the venue had accidentally double-booked. At first, the two theatre crews attempt to alternate their use of the space, but this doesn’t work out as there is never enough time for a full run. Eventually, they split the space into two and the rehearsals take place side by side. Throughout the whole ordeal, we see how the plays are constructed and deconstructed through the directors’ visions, as well as more physical aspects of theatre-making, such as the changing of props and how the overwhelmed tech crew keep up with everything.

With all the action happening onstage, I end up getting caught between feeling both intrigued and detached. The characters in the play, as well as the the plays-within-the-play, are well portrayed. However, the frequent disruption of the emotional arch of each play prevented me from feeling too invested in either Secret Love or Peach Blossom Land.

That said, I am surprisingly moved when the protagonists in each play get their brief happy endings, even though I tried to resist the sentiment. After all, by revealing to us how the two plays are created, isn’t Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land warning us against being manipulated by these very stories? And isn’t my catharsis ultimately a betrayal of the terms and conditions of my ‘audience membership’ that was set up at the start of the play, that this is a non-play about two plays, so I shouldn’t care too much about anything?

But perhaps this dilemma can also be applied to the state of the world we live in today. We are constantly exposed to so many perspectives on so many different issues that it makes it almost impossible for us to confidently take any one side as the truth.

And yet, isn’t it only human for us to make a stand despite it all?

“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.

“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.

“Special Education teacher’s exasperation or a call to action?”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 9 March 2019

Not in My Lifetime? is a play about many things. It is about the love two Special Education teachers have for their students, which drives them to continue their seemingly futile efforts to push for educational reforms. It is also about the emotional exhaustion and vulnerability that comes with teaching children with special needs, when their improvement may not be measured by Singapore’s KPI-obsessed culture. Ultimately, this nuanced performance provides a space for Special Education teachers to embrace the entirety of their experiences – the good, the bad, and the unanswered questions.

At Gateway Theatre, the stage is bare apart from a human-sized dice, toddler-sized chairs and an ominous figure lurking at the back of the stage. At the start of the play, it is explained that the figure is Mr. Wrinkle, a mysterious mentor figure who is referenced throughout the play. We never get to see what Mr. Wrinkle looks like; we only get to see the back of his large wooden chair, which is draped with his coat. However, we hear him through the disembodied voice of Timothy Nga.

The two main characters of the performance arrive on the stage. Inch Chua portrays a bubbly and optimistic teacher who, at the start of her journey as a Special Education teacher, is full of hope. She looks up to an older and more experienced teacher (Evelyn Chye) as a mentor figure, who is portrayed by actress Evelyn Chye. As the play goes on, the younger teacher becomes more jaded and tired. These two teachers are not particularly complex characters, but they are familiar and compelling.

The play succeeds in conveying the frustrations of Special Education teachers through simple and effective examples, making the play’s message accessible to everyone. For instance, the fact that students in regular schools were given proper thermometers during the SARS epidemic, while students in Special Education schools were given unreliable disposable fever strips, shows the unequal treatment of the two groups.

In a more physical and embodied scene, we see the teachers’ despair as a student experiences a breakdown, which is enacted through the violent wringing and crumbling of an unseen actor covered by a blanket. I find this dark and heartfelt scene especially poignant, as I can see both the teacher and the student in their irreconcilable emotional frustrations.

The play does not shy away from its message. The uphill task of pushing for change is portrayed as a climb up a ladder, while the unique challenges of educating students with special needs – which should be carried by the whole society – is portrayed by the actors carrying a sewn amalgamation of bags and cloth. But while these metaphors allow the message to be portrayed succinctly, I wonder if the emotional and moral weight is truly conveyed.

Not in My Lifetime? seems to be a story that’s told out of exasperation. However, it is clear that despite the exhaustion, these teachers still hope for changes that would make our society truly inclusive.

“An Ode to the Sea”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 19 January 2019

Yesterday it rained salt by Bhumi Collective is about two men who keep connecting with and disconnecting from one another. It is also an ode to the alluring but terrifying sea. This is a moving and visceral piece, but it struggles to deliver a compelling narrative.

In the black box space, a man (Kaykay Nizam) sits on one of the seats. The sound of crashing waves plays over the speakers. Not much is happening onstage, so I just sit and watch. But imperceptibly, boredom slips into absorption and embodiment. Slowly, I feel my body mirroring the slowness and stillness of the man’s movement, and I can almost feel the waves lapping at my waist.

Azman (Soultari Amin Farid) appears on stage. In English, he describes the strangeness and distance he feels in a place that should be home to him. The first man, aware that he is being watched, replies in Malay. This exchange continues to occur across the stubborn distance in language. It is jarring to watch. The way the two of them move, too, is different – the first man’s movement is slow but strong, while Azman’s body language is tense and clipped, just like his words. At this point, I am unsure of their relationship. I wonder if they are equals, or different psychological manifestations of the same person.

Later, the bamboo poles are arranged in the shape of a boat, and the two men set out to sea. The tension and unease Azman embodied earlier seem to dissipate as the duo start playing childhood games with each other. Now, I think they might be brothers.

“If I could, I would want to die here. Everything I want is here,” Azman announces. Suddenly, the sea becomes choppy. Azman transforms into something else, though I am not sure what. Is Azman so affected by the sea that he is experiencing a psychotic episode? Or is the actor playing Azman now playing someone else? Powerful and mystical, he dances, smiling as the other man drowns. (I only find out during the post-show dialogue that Azman had actually become a sea goddess, but that reference was completely lost on me.)

The piece ends with an awkward transition into naturalism as the pair return to shore. It is only at this point that the two men are explicitly revealed to be father and son, and I learn that they’re trying to come to terms with losing a relative to the sea.

Throughout the performance, I felt myself being carried by and absorbed in the ebb and flow of each moment. Yet, the piece with its constantly shifting focus, never feels anchored in its characters and their stories. I was, in the end, mostly confused by the relationship between the two men, which was the centre of the piece.