THE CAVE by Annabel Tan

“The Cave”

Reviewer: Dawn Teo
Performance: 10 June 2016

Written by Annabel Tan and directed by Benjamin Chow, The Cave is a monologue written to explore the female body.  The space is simple yet intriguing. A single character, Eve (played by Selma Alkaff), dressed in whites, is walking around in a dream state blowing bubbles. All this while, audience members would enter, settle down and observe her go about this ritual until the show starts.

It is a clever way to immerse the audience into the experience and let the atmosphere sink in. Besides that, the set is aesthetic and functional at the same time. With the use of the imagination and the entire alphabetical jigsaw play mat, Selma transforms the set into usable props such as a baby, a desk and even the mouth of a cave.

Despite the space constrains and the set, I feel that more stillness can be used to hold her presence apart from the constant movement. Though some gestural illustrations are vivid and enhance the story-telling, it is too overwhelming at some points and some directional variations are unnecessary.

With that, some portions of the text are lost and cannot be heard clearly. Together with the use of sound, the voice gets drowned out. That is quite a pity since the text itself has plenty of emotional shifts, juxtapositions and changes in thought processes. The performance may be improved if the text is  given more time to breathe and settle with the audience, before shuffling from one story to another. Regardless of weaknesses in text, direction and delivery, Selma remains a charismatic performer and she embodies the beauty of transformation in her body – illustrating the changes in atmosphere, time and thoughts with clarity.