“The Eye of the Beholder”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 5 September 2016

“It’s an Antrios,” Serge declares at the start of the play, in a mix of smug self-confidence and ecclesiastical solemnity to a disbelieving Marc, who blurts, “you paid two hundred thousand dollars for this shit?”

Yasmina Reza’s Art centres on this very Antrios painting as a trigger. What starts out as a difference in taste (at some point, we don’t know if Serge finds the adjectives ‘white’ or ‘shit’ more insulting) quickly escalates into fiery arguments, personal attacks and friends questioning the reason why they are even friends to begin with.

Reza’s one-liner factory of a script (translated by Christopher Hampton) looks at our subjective perception of art. Are we simply obsequious parrots of institutionally defined culture? And how much does one’s class influence what we read out of art? Clearly, everyone is entitled to his or her own appreciation of art, but Serge and Marc stand firmly by their own worldviews.

An impeccable cast animates the script, with Gerald Chew playing the cultivated Serge, Lim Yu-Beng the sardonic Marc, and Remesh Panicker the bumbling Yvan, with nary a line out of place, each defensively protecting their fragile male egos. At the climax of their quarrel, where Yvan’s previously innocuous felt-tip pen is put to shocking use, the scene is as taut as piano wire in spite of the sparse dialogue, as the actors’ facial expressions do all the talking.

Twenty-two years after it was written, Art feels just as contemporary and universal, having been translated to multiple languages and staged in Mandarin by Nine Years Theatre back in 2014. Art speaks to people’s insecurities around art, our reactionary posturing to every new –ism that emerges and the unavoidable friction between old friends. Critic Michael Billington singles out the deeper and more difficult question: is a sustained relationship dependent on a “certain skillful hypocrisy”? For all of its riotous hilarity and ninety-minute economy, this is not a trifle of a play, but one that packs a mean intellectual punch.

Oh and did I also forget to mention that Singapore Repertory Theatre’s staging of Art is in our very own National Gallery? The irony is delicious.

“The Last Temptation of Stony – Sleeping Naked aims for the heavens but crashes into the sea”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 3 September 2016

I can’t decide what I find most maddening about Sleeping Naked – the didactic dialogue, the tiresome transitions, or just the bizarre injection of Taylor Swift.

Let us start with the script, which seems bent on being a vehement rejection of the ‘show not tell’ dictum. The husband (Michael Cheng), the wife (Eleanor Tan) and the daughter (Eng Kai Er) soliloquize about their dissatisfaction at the start in Alcoholics Anonymous confessional style: I want to slip the surly bonds of earth! I want to sleep with my daddy! I am a sexually frustrated wife! After this comes a series of sanctimonious monologues that double up as a crash course in Gandhi’s dubious spiritual practice for the audience. And let us not forget the god-awful smutty strawberry metaphor for sex.

The painful dialogue is further belabored by a manually-rotated set, which gets rotated one too many times while generic New Age muzak plays. The set might reflect a mandala, time or the circle of life, but it is perhaps most poignant in mirroring the circuitous dialogue, where Leng Leng’s Electra complex and Mei Man’s mounting jealousy and exasperation is repeated at unnecessary length. Credit, however, must be given to Eng Kai Er, whose remarkable physicality and petulance animated the piece.

Unsurprisingly, the husband Stony’s quest for meaning unravels at the end, but his realization of the futility of his obsession is reached abruptly, as if someone just flicked a switch in him. There is some attempt at crafting some character history, including Stony’s absent father and his dreams of a ship, and these memories are resurrected with flimsy and uncentred audiovisuals. Yet are these supposed to stir pathos? It is difficult to emote with him for this presupposed sex versus spirituality struggle is not particularly compelling nor convincing, and thus the tragedy of his self-destruction has little resonance.

The premise of the play is intriguing, and the religious themes, heavy, so with a lot more sensitivity, this could have been a less moralizing and more pensive piece. What this play needs is not a spiritual guru, but a dramaturg.

“Being and Nothingness”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 18 June 2016

The manager in Café (Erwin Shah Ismail) exclaims on more than one occasion that “this is a crisis!”. The real crisis, however, is having to sit through this agonizing play, which is as tepid as a latte left to sit for too long and as slow as service in the café.

But I think that’s precisely the point here: that nothing happens.

Percolating through the script are observations on a very contemporary sense of entitlement and lack of compassion. The play contrasts a wide range of population demographics and juxtaposes them. These include the office worker with First World Problems (deliberating between a mocha and a macchiato) complaining about an ex-convict’s poor service (half-convincingly played by Joshua Lim). Zee Wong delivers a riveting portrayal of a mercurial, judgmental and blithely self-obsessed narcissist. The showdown in the final scene is ugly, carnivorous and searing.

The playwright, Joel Tan, has a remarkable ear for dialogue and a mordant sense of humour. That much comes through here, capturing what is pretty much the ‘if it’s not on Instagram, it didn’t happen’ zeitgeist to hilarious effect.

The bigger question is what Tan is trying to achieve with his play.

What is new in Café is Tan’s experiment with absurdism. Audience anticipation and expectations demands that something is about to happen, especially when every character is desperate to leave. Yet there is no dénouement, and the exit door is nothing but an empty symbol. There is no follow up as to what happens to these characters after they leave, nor, I suspect, do any of us really care.

As a dissection of society’s ills and neuroses, Café is incisive. Ryann Othniel Seng’s atmospheric sound design – crackling thunder, the hissing of the milk steamer, and thunderous plops of water – echoes much of the characters themselves, all sound and fury, signifying nothing.  Instead, a rankling sense of emptiness in the play pervades in all five characters, and hollers at the heart of the play.

“Afresh, Afresh, Afresh”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 11 June 2016

Trees, A Crowd emerges as exceedingly relevant in light of the proposed Cross Island Line and the potential incursions into the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. The assumption that  politically charged plays run the risk of sacrificing story and subtlety for stridency and didacticism is not entirely unfounded here. Playwright-director Irfan Kasban is not one for subtlety – he cranks up the kitsch levels and brings the audience through a spin cycle of courtroom drama, a talk show, sexy advertisement, public consultation and the twittering Twitterverse in a mere 90 minutes. The ensemble (comprising Jo Tan, Faizal Abdullah, Shafiqah Efandi, Chng Xin Xuan) hams it up in a charade of caricatures and the debate plays out like a farce.

Beside this development versus conservation debate, there is a snide running meta-commentary on millennials, theatre in Singapore and the power imbalance between the state and non-profit organisations. At some point, the issue of foreign workers is also thrown into the mix, with a comparison made between how trees and imported labour are both so easily replaceable. One starts to sense that beneath all this business lies an exasperation with both institutions and unproductive chatter.

In the few scenes where Kasban cuts through the farce with more pensive moments and monologues, what results are arresting mise-en-scènes on their own, where bare bulbs dangle like fruit from a tree. But because the whole set-up has been so non-naturalist and parodic, these scenes operate out of sync with a play that paradoxically is hyper-aware of its own artifice.

I was reminded of Drama Box’s The Lesson (2015) that broached the similar topic of development and heritage through forum theatre; both of which ended in the ineluctable tune of progress – the thunderous clangor of a wrecking ball. The crucial difference, however, was the sense of agency present in The Lesson, which is utterly bereft in Trees. ‘What can a bunch of actors do!’ a character cries. Now I wonder what Minister Grace Fu in the audience has to say about that.

“The More Loving One”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 28 May 2016

First things first, Falling is not a play about autism – that much is clear right from the first line of the director’s message .  The ‘falling’ is a family falling apart and losing control. Perhaps this play is more about coping, portraying how an average family deals with and loves an autistic child.

Andrew Marko plays Josh, the severely autistic child, and convincingly commits to his role, down to the slurred speech and the manifest posturing. Tan Kheng Hua plays the mother, Tami, with gravity and grace, appearing in virtually every scene and soldiering on with a boundless reservoir of patience (mollifying a belligerent child takes on a whole new level). Playwright Deanna Jent’s script raises plenty of uncomfortable questions about the realities of living with a volatile child, and of course, there are no easy answers. As witnesses to these extremely private domestic moments, we are as shocked as Nana (the side-splitting Neo Swee Lin) when we share in her dismay over Josh’s aggression, and equally as powerless. The refrain “I don’t know what to say” is not just the family’s disconsolate utterance, but also that of the audience’s.

The great triumph in Tracie Pang’s direction is probing the emotional implications of Josh’s disability on familial relationships. Tami and Bill (Adrian Pang) clash over their views on sending Billy to a home; Nana begins as the Bible-quoting, prayer-dispensing comic relief but slowly gains understanding; Lisa (Fiona Lim) desires escape and begrudges the prioritization of Josh’s needs over hers. Regrettably, Lim has a less commanding stage presence beside her co-stars, and the opportunity to explore a more complicated relationship with her brother is glossed over for a one-note angst-ridden teenage disdain.

Wong Chee Wai and Chris Chua’s suburban HDB flat functions as both domicile and enclosure. Nana and Lisa have the option of leaving for Australia, Bill teeters close on the precipice of divorce, but it is Tami and Josh who are ‘stuck’ – the former trapped by virtue of her consuming maternal responsibilities, and the latter by his mental affliction.

I am also not so certain if the melodramatic opening number was all that necessary. Surreal, yes. But what deeper point does it make? But there are other more successful sequences, particularly the final scene. As the poet WH Auden would say, “If equal affection cannot be, /Let the more loving one be me.”

“The Mother We Share”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 25 March 2016

Checkpoint Theatre’s latest production, Recalling Mother, is, as its title suggests, an exercise in constructing autobiographies. Much like a home cooked meal, it is written, performed simply and sincerely by Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed. There is no fourth wall, no hagiography, just simple and powerful storytelling – the very atom of theatre making – at its core. And what tender and touching stories we hear!

The two leads walk us through their childhood, the gradual aging of their mothers and the performance history of the piece (this is its fourth staging). They slip into their characters effortlessly, modulating their tones, speaking solely in their mother tongue and altering their physical gait, right down to the sallow droop of a weather-beaten face. In this parade of characters, the audience meets Madam Wong, the transparently emotional passive-aggressive Cantonese-speaking mother, and Cik Bee Bee, the endless spring of supportive love with a smile that conceals all. Crackling with tension and bravura, the play renegotiates the evolving giving and receiving dynamics between a mother and daughter in light of physical deterioration and dementia. The result is heartbreaking at times, but always humming with infinite tenderness.

At some points, portrayals of Madam Wong and Cik Bee Bee border on caricature – the mother obsessed with whether her daughter has eaten or the mother who keeps getting non-Chinese names wrong – but these moments are deliberately comic and comment on how nostalgia and the passing of time distorts of memories. For Wong and Noorlinah, memory acquires auditory, kinaesthetic and gustatory textures – Noorlinah assiduously romanising the Arabic script for her mother’s Hajj and Wong looking doe-eyed at her mother cooking up a storm.

At times, I found the lighting a tad jarring, especially in the sharp demarcations of scenes. Yet, some of the best scenes are achieved through the intelligent use of lighting, such as front lighting Noorlinah and Wong as they twirl around on stage to strains of Cantonese opera, producing enlarged silhouettes on the cyclorama, the telling presence of a larger, maternal figure as they yearn to be a child again and drink from the milk of maternal goodness.

What makes this such a compelling production is the well-paced direction and sensitive script, flowing with the natural cadences of everyday speech. When playing their mothers, there are long tracts of Cantonese and Malay, delivered without any surtitles. By the end of the play, when Wong and Noorlinah finally introduce the names of their mothers to us, whilst their mothers’ recorded voices play in the background, we feel like we have already met these wonderful women.

“A Triumphant Revival of a Chinese Classic”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 1 April 2016

The Theatre Practice’s latest offering is the bold and confidently-directed Liao Zhai Rocks, a Chinese classic reanimated by the piercing wail of an electric guitar. In this fantastical world where men and shapeshifting spirits roam the earth, reality and illusion proves to be slithery concepts.

Co-directors Kuo Jian Hong and George Chan remarkably orchestrates moments that break the visual monotony of a scene through spellbinding moments of stage magic.  This is well supported by the very adaptive set (Wong Chee Wai). The lighting design (Genevieve Peck) and sound design (Shah Tahir) shines the brightest in the second act, evoking a febrile psychedelic Underworld whilst differentiating King Yama’s voice with an authorial, reverberating timbre. Coupled with elaborate period costume (Tube Gallery) and a sharply choreographed ensemble, Liao Zhai Rocks cements itself as a sumptuous feast for the eyes right from the opening number.

The main cast composes fairly archetypal characters who deliver consistent performances. There is the scholar figure Sang Xiao (played with debonair insouciance by the impeccable Inred Liang), the curious fox demon, Ying Ning (Joanna Dong), the melancholic minstrel maiden, San Niang (Ethel Yap), the adamant demon-slayer, Cheng Ban Xian (Sugie) and a wizened guardian character, Tian Zi Zai (Yeo Lyle). They present a compelling tale of love-triangles and forbidden desires, but I find myself struggling at times with issues of plausibility. This is especially so in the second act where character histories are shoehorned and dovetail to form a dense web of past and present lives. Perhaps it is the script’s eagerness to tie the many threads together, or the acting or my immanent skepticism; but my biggest quibble with this otherwise handsome production is the hurried plot developments that teeter on the edge of contrivance.

Putting these moments of incredulity aside, the heady cocktail of the supernatural and the primal force of rock music works. Standouts include songs like Tangled（缠绵) and Saving My Beloved/Life Against Death (救爱／生死难眠), best testified by audience members humming the very tune after the show. However, I am slightly disappointed by King Yama’s entrance (我是阎罗), having anticipated a more larger-than-life character, and the odd moments of farce where King Yama seems less macabre Ruler of the Underworld and more Monkey King does him little favours.

Pu Songling conceived of these Strange Tales from the Chinese Studio as an allegory for an overly ordered Chinese society that scorns acts of transgression and forbidden love. This battle between the private and the public rages on today.  As one particular line in the lyrics goes – we can only blame the human heart for being hard to fathom (怪人心难以捉摸). Well, it is not hard to fathom why this musical is being restaged after six years, and I must say, Liao Zhai really does rock.