“Refuge”

Reviewer: Jorah Yu
Performance: 8 December 2016

From the synopsis, I had thought it was going to be one of those deep, philosophical, contemporary plays that I would once again fail to understand after more than an hour of trying not to fall asleep.

Wrong.

Refuge is about a man and his wife and three children running away from war, the world as they know taking a steep plunge to hell, crashing and burning in the most glorious, shock-inducing way, written and performed by Pavan J Singh. Braham tells his story with minimalist props and a lot of heart, with clever uses of stage directions to fully utilize the tiny, but personal space.

The set-up is simple – colourful luggage, photo frames, clothes, a desk, chairs litter the stage. Low budget. One of the things I first notice is a straight row of several varying hats on the floor, later used as a way for the actor to switch between multiple personalities.

Pavan plays a convincing number of characters across the entire duration of the play, from the refugee running away from everything he has known to the portrayal of his father, his children, his wife, the ship captain that kills her and the French ambassador who turns Braham away. Pavan plays them by investing personal emotions and great intensity. This is impressive considering how Pavan is constantly changing characters in between consecutive dialogues.

The play gives a lot without forcing itself on anyone (God bless). Unlike many predecessors that attempt to send some fundamentally deep message home, it does not smack anyone across the face with some all-important manifesto about social justice. Instead, it humanizes the story and gives a face to the refugees that encounter such problems every day all over the world, aiming to show that in relatable way as  Braham endures the unimaginable to make it to a safe haven, giving younger, more privileged people more to think,  about whether they would accept refugees into their own lands should the situation ever arise, raising a question that few of us living in Singapore would otherwise ever ask ourselves given our comfortable status as a first world country that enjoys great economical success.

“4S Stories After Bedtime”

Reviewer: Jorah Yu
Performance: 19 November 2016

Marketed as a horror genre, this play does not meet the expectations of what the synopsis offered.

The play explores four Malay superstitions – Santau, Susuk, Saka, and Seru. The attempt to blend modern humour into the play is applaudable, but ultimately feels over the top and cheesy at best, seeing that unless the play is specifically written to be a combination of horror-comedy, it breaks any and all tension that is set up by the show up to those points.

The Black Box is a medium sized theatre that has the tendency of feeling a little too hollow and stark if used unwisely.  To stage 4S here runs the risk of the detaching the audience from the play. This is exactly what happens. I find great difficulty empathising with the characters  nor do I find the story engaging. It doesn’t help that the physical distance between cast and audience further isolates us so that we miss the spookiness and creepiness the play wanted to showcase.

As for the pacing of the play, whilst the short story-descriptions for each superstition makes sense, each individual scene is far too short, with some of them maybe being the length of a single page or so, in terms of dialogue – I can not tell whether this was due to a weak script or bad directing, but it definitely affects how the audience’s ability to follow the story.

To summarise, 4S feels like a sloppily shot late night television show that is produced only because it can be, with little actual direction. A good try at imbuing horror elements and local stories into a play, but further work is necessary for the production work to fully communicate any message that it is trying to convey.

“People Watching”

Reviewer: Jorah Yu
Performance: 18 June 2016

Cafe is a study of people. Singaporeans, to be exact. It looks at what we do, what we don’t do, and what we sometimes wish we did but never managed to do. It’s a big question mark on our choices, reflected by the characters questioning their past and present decisions and what led them to their current state.

The play involves five characters: two working ladies reminiscing and three waiters in a restaurant waiting for their shifts to end.

How did their decisions get them to this point?

The setting is simple, and rightfully so. Minimalist lights hanging above a coffee bar that’s complete with what seems like an actual commercial brewer; a set of table and chairs sit on the side for customers to come and laze around in.

This gives quite the perspective. Having worked as a waiter before, I find the interactions between the three staff members hilarious. The manager who’s too nice, the problematic part-time student, and that one guy who’s good at his job, but has a crappy attitude. The scenario’s so familiar it’s as if one is actually sitting at a table nearby, watching through the corner of your eye.

Oh, and the language is an absolute delight.

To be honest, I don’t think anything except Singlish will work in this context. It sets the mood and the context – casual, local, and slack. The Malay manager speaks with such accustomed wit while calling his fellow colleague a ‘cheenah babi’ – jokingly, of course – that everything clicks into place with just that slight shift in language.

At the end of the day, I do think that this is the sort of play that people call ‘acquired taste’. It’s a fine balance between abstract ideas and reality, pressing on the problems that we don’t ask ourselves every day. Nonetheless, a show well done.

“Emily the Musical”

Reviewer: Jorah Yu
Performance: 20 May 2016

Emily the Musical is mildly confusing.

There are so many elements in this musical that needs refining. The scenes do not flow like they should, or as they are supposed to. This performance seems more like the first draft of a film: shot, cut and pasted, rushed out in a limited amount of time without the delicate editing it needs to filter and polish the rougher and rockier parts.

The blackouts are borderline ridiculous in terms of how quick they are. There is often not even enough time for my eyes to adjust to the new lighting state the lighting designer has set out before the stage dims once again into a blackout. Then, we are back to working lights again. Ergo, it feels like going to an a la carte buffet where the food keeps coming and the waiter is force-feeding you dish after dish while you’re still struggling to swallow what you’ve just had.

Another part that needs resolving is actor placement – seeing people in the performing space with their hands empty and doing nothing is an incredibly frustrating thing, even if it’s just for one song.

While Act One has a lighter note to it, it takes a darker turn when the truth of Richard’s death is revealed to us. Following an intermission, Act Two is a web of revelations, with the plot quietly coming together to ensnare the characters into this situation that Emily has weaved out of her own need for love.  This slowly destroys the ones she wanted to hold dearest to her.

The actors do carry their own weight on stage:  kudos  to Crenshaw Yeo, Karen Lim, and Melissa Wei-En Hecker for presenting the father-daughter and mother-son moments so beautifully.

There is much potential and space for improvement, especially with the stage directions and blockings . That said, this production seems promising – the bookwriter/lyricist Stella Kon has stated that Emily the Musical is looking for sponsors to fund further development.

“Ophelia”

Reviewer: Jorah Yu
Performance: 18 March 2016

To start: Ophelia is absolutely wonderful.

The story is about Shakespeare’s Ophelia – expectedly – and deliberately reconfigures the time and space of the universe belonging to Hamlet, in the context of story/play, and in relation to Hamlet the character. But without a doubt, Ophelia is the main attraction.

Placing the Hamlet/Ophelia coupling in differing circumstances on many accounts, Ophelia is a lovely taste of Contemporary Shakespeare, and an excellent example of how love and grief can either make, or destroy us.

The script, boldly and passionately written by Michelle Tan and Natalie Hennedige, has Ophelia saying “The whole world is your five stages of grief!” to Hamlet at several points which is possibly the funniest thing I’ve heard coming out of anyone for the past month. The play gives the poor girl so much character and appeal supplemented by Jo Kukathas’s fierce execution of Ophelia’s thoughts and utterances. Ophelia is so much more than the all-consuming depression that eventually led her to her death in Shakespeare’s text and I cannot express in words how much meaning the actor gives to her life and sheds light on her eventual drowning.

Many of the design choices also seems cleverly picked, with it set in a modern, yet ageless sort of world. The actors come on stage in simple clothing, black or white, most of the time, and many hints of water as an element of the show are obvious from the set, to their attire, and the overall colours.

Overall, Ophelia has been largely successful as a character study and portrayal of one of Shakespeare’s most romanticised female characters. Ophelia, unexplored but beloved, is never mentioned after her funeral in the original Shakespearean script. Cake Theatrical Production’s rendition of Ophelia in Ophelia presents to the audience the magnificence that she should have been.

“No Man’s Land”

Reviewer: Jorah Yu
Performance: 30 January 2016

First thing’s first, this is not an experience I enjoyed … completely.

After I get to the appointed location, slowly, one by one, we enter and are instructed to snoop around, going through old articles of all sorts, though we’re not allowed to physically touch anything. Fear of breaking belongings from the organisers, I assume, though that does make it feel less personal as my hands hover over relics that were not of this time.

Perhaps this was the intended effect?

We’re walking, walking, walking, and we end up in a truck that’s colder than Snow City.

Confusion; whatever the meaning, the significance of this situation inside a roving refrigerator does not induce any meditative trance where I can find meaning and relevance. All I know is that the temperature is chilly and the sound of a roaring engine right next to my ear is very much painful.

This is something I will not wish on my enemy.

We are eventually led to another shop house and individual characters that are all loosely linked to each other greet us separately. Every unique personality begin regurgitating their own stories and confronting us with questions that we don’t want to think about on a daily basis. Some of these questions find us quiet and unspeaking. These include questions on what it is like to be Singaporean, and to consider what it is like to be a Singaporean living in Old Joo Chiat, and present day Joo Chiat.

Now, I am not a deeply philosophical person, and there are many things that can be added to improve what I have endured for an hour and forty-five minutes. But the questions do bring their points across.

Though not a full success, the questions provoke some form of interrogation within oneself. You do think of Singapore, back then, and of those people who existed in those days, standing on the pivoting point of history and feeling so utterly insecure and terrified for their futures – gone.

No Man’s Land has planted many questions in my head. Regardless of its many experimental shortcomings, it is a commendable effort and I believe, a step forward in its contemporary ways of drawing attention to the history of Singapore.