SANDAIME RICHARD by Hideki Noda and Ong Keng Sen

“Shakespeare, the writer of our discontent”

Reviewer: Walter Chan
Performance: 9 September 2016

“Who ever heard of a writer growing up happy?”

That quote comes in the middle of the performance of Sandaime Richard, written by Hideki Noda and inspired by Shakespeare’s Richard III. And when said writer is Shakespeare himself, you get a sense of the narrative complexity and comic irreverence of this play.

Directed by Ong Keng Sen (known for his other intercultural Shakespeare pieces like Lear and Lear Dreaming), Sandaime Richard uses Richard III to dive into the personal history of William Shakespeare, the author. Translated into a Japanese context, the events in Richard III is transformed into infighting within an ikebana (flower-arrangement) clan.

The Japanese context sets up an intercultural medley of performance styles: there is the rowdy and playful Takarazuka, such as when the ensembleof actors slip in and out of their roles to perform, then parody the personal drama of Shakespeare’s family. There’s a smattering of noh theatre during a particular scene in Kenzan Tower, where the dialogue oscillates between the noh style of slow, solemn chanting and a naturalistic delivery of lines. And that’s not to mention the Indonesian element, through the shadow puppetry of wayang kulit that mirrors the onstage action in some scenes.

I admit, this piece could be somewhat difficult for non-Japanese speaking audiences to follow (even with the surtitle screen on the side), given that the majority of the dialogue is in Japanese. (Oh, and I should mention that the other languages used in this play are Balinese, Bahasa Indonesia and English.) However, as with all his intercultural pieces, Ong’s dexterity with balancing different languages and performance styles not only demonstrates his deftness at constructing an intricate (or one might even say “difficult”) piece, but also challenges the audience to ponder about the frisson between the divergent elements in the performance.

And towards the end of the play, when all the different storylines (spoiler alert) converge and the story world collapses in upon itself, we are left in a dizzying spiral of delusions – the boundary between past/present, England/Japan, performance/reality is dissolved. The audience member walks out of the theatre, feeling very confused about the piece. But that’s probably the point – to throw supposedly stable elements, like the meaning of the words in Richard III, the history of Shakespeare’s life, and the authority of Shakespeare, into question.