“In Search of Salt”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 16 December 2016

An intense story and evocative acting pretty much sums up what In Search of Salt. Playwright Sarah Howell pens a tale of loss, denial, sisterly love and friendship complicated by social media. Protagonist Gaya receives a Facebook message from her sister Sel a few months after the latter’s death. While this appears to be the start of a whodunnit-style mystery, the play unfolds to become Gaya’s search for closure.

Actors Allison Wong (as Gaya), Ranice Tay (as Sel’s friend Stephanie) and Susie Penrice Tyrie (as Gaya and Sel’s mother) are very expressive actors. It is their ability to hold our attention as they struggle with Sel’s death that makes the play so heart-wrenching. Clad in black, moving within a space where the general colour palette is largely monochromatic, they enact the various stages of grief: denial, guilt and/or acceptance. Videos of happy times between Sel and Gaya, shot shakily on a mobile camera, are projected in colour, creating a contrast between the mood and the historical separations.

Allison Wong’s transition from denial and guilt and to acceptance is particularly moving. She paces her performance well, allowing us to feel the depth of her emotions at every stage of the story.

The theatre space is configured as a theatre-in-the-round, where the actors are surrounded by the audience. As the audience, we also become participants of the story, as we see not just the actors, but each other. This form of staging is particularly fitting, given that the topic of death is intimate and personal. The actors become caged in by the audience, reminiscent of how they are trapped emotionally after the death of Sel.

In Search of Salt was written to pass the Bechdel test, and features an all-women cast, with a woman at its helm. It will be interesting to see what Passerby Projects will present next, considering that this is their second production after LEAVES, another emotionally-charged, family-oriented production earlier this year.

“Suspense-filled masterpiece, but could do with more chemistry”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 14 October 2016

Asylum Theatre’s choice of Ira Levin’s 1978 comedy-thriller and its muted noir-esque set is full of promises, but it is a pity that this got eclipsed by poor acting.

In Act 1, we watch in suspense as it slowly builds up to a murder. Andrew Mowatt is perfect in the role of Sidney Bruhl, a once-successful playwright who finds himself running out of ideas, facing the prospect of becoming a has-been. He is nonchalant towards the murder he commits which makes for good comedy. He is careful not to over-play the part so as not as appear mad and thereby discrediting his own character.

Unfortunately, Elena Yeo, as his wife Myra, does not do justice to the play. Her acting is restrained and she lacks an emotional connection with her on-stage husband. She also struggles with her character’s British accent which further adds to the disparity.

The play is stronger in Act 2 as the focus shifts to other characters. But it also becomes different, more intellectual, like a metaphysical self-examination. We realise we are watching a play about a play that is being written as it plays out. Indeed, does Deathtrap exist outside our watching of it?

Deathtrap’s own status as a play is revealed through theatre references in Sidney and Clifford’s speeches. Various characters even muse about how an audience would interpret the events on stage. The effect of this is to implicate the audience in the unfolding. Of course this leads us to wonder whether we are merely watching a play, or if we too are actors in Ira Levin’s grand overarching play.

Despite going into the philosophical realm, the play still remains true to its comedy and thriller status by using the tried-and-tested methods and devices. For instance, through the use of caricatures like Bridget Fernandez’s Helga Ten Dorp, a gypsy who flamboyantly solves the murder using ESP, and Paul Lucas’ Porter Milgrim, a foolish lawyer with an annoyingly nasal voice.

Asylum Theatre’s Deathtrap is a good production by most counts, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it through the two acts. I just can’t help but wish that Myra’s role had been more suitably cast, or that there at least had been some chemistry between Sidney and Myra.

“When ‘Indian’ means cultural differences”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 10 September 2016

We Are Like This Only 2 is a comedy that casts its eye on the cultural clashes that ensue when an “old” Singaporean Indian family gets tied to a “new” Indian expatriate family after their children fall in love.

Seasoned performers Daisy Irani (also director) and Subin Subaiah (also writer) steal the show with their impeccable comic timing and Bollywood-worthy performances, complete with singing, dancing and over-the-top acting, deliberately calculated to bring about the desired laughs. In the midst of her portrayals of more sedate older women, Irani particularly impresses with her versatility in a sketch as a sprightly event planner decked out in a cool jacket and a bob wig, looking completely at home in that outlandish role.

While the production is tied together by the impending wedding of the aforementioned children, there are sketches randomly inserted that are hard to place in the overarching narrative. These are historical sketches involving a Sepoy and his wife, a Chettiar and his wife, and an Indian prisoner and his wife. Indeed, it might be that these sketches are intentionally obtuse. After all, Subaiah states in the programme’s foreword that the production is not intended to stick to a strict structure, jesting that Indians “love to go off on a tangent”.

This ambiguity as to what is deliberate also comes up in Sharul Channa’s portrayal of a “old” Indian Singaporean Tamil woman. Speaking with an Indian accent peppered with Singlish, her character comes across more as an assimilating (or assimilated) “new” Indian rather than “old” Indian. I wonder if her character is meant to question the old/new Indian binary, or if it is just an unintentional effect of the acting.

The production is rife with cultural references that can be quite specific; yet it manages to find its way to a common ground often enough that its audience does not get too lost. However, the production’s progress as a comedy is hindered by the lengthy monologues that fall to the characters played by Rishi Budhrani.  These texts border on the didactic and while they may be useful and informative to those unfamiliar with the dynamics of an Indian community, the monologues drags out the pacing of the performance.

Having said that, the production does have moments where it successfully marries observation without letting comedy down. In a particularly poignant illustration, Irani (as the “new” Indian) and Channa (as the “old” Indian) sing a popular song simultaneously, the former in Hindi and the latter in Tamil. While the production examines different facets of the cultural clashes between the “new” and “old” Indians, it is ironic that this brief moment is goes to the core of the issue, illustrating that beneath that superficial similarity lies a deep difference that is both cultural and linguistic.

“An understated Emily”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 16 July 2016

Emily of Emerald Hill gets the nomadic treatment in Desert Wine’s production as it roams from non-traditional venues like community centres to traditional venues like Goodman Arts Centre. While each venue will bring with it a different experience, the one constant is the performance.

It is reassuring that the high point of this production is Laura Kee’s performance as Emily. Despite being much too young for the role, she still manages to convince us that she has lived far more than her years. Emily experiences success, loss, grief, and even humiliation. Yet she remains logical and focused at times of crisis, for instance, being a good wife in the face of her husband’s infidelity so that she would, in the eyes of society, remain blameless.

In performing this role, Kee demonstrates a familiarity with the Peranakan culture that is at the core of Emily Gan. She switches effortlessly between English, Malay and Hokkein, and exhibits the body language befitting of a woman who has the grace of a traditional Peranakan woman. She is tireless as the perfect host and narrator, attending to each and every guest and making everyone (including us) feel welcome. Throughout her performance, Kee makes good use of the stage’s space, despite the set occupying a relatively small portion of it. In fact, the set is not at all as stripped down as promised. While there are no elaborate sets or lighting and multimedia enhancements, the stage still contains two wicker chairs, a wooden screen, and table with smaller items like a telephone and glasses, making for a decent set.

The Emily that Kee creates is a woman of quiet determination. She manipulates through emotional blackmail and tries to control much of what goes on around her, but her character is neither loud nor showy. Visually, Emily’s sarong kebaya is the only indicator of her Peranakan heritage; she wears no jewellery and her hair is done up in a simple bun. Her clothes are in shades of red – while bright, they do not scream for attention.

We may hate Emily for the way she exploits the people around her to achieve her own ends. Yet as we witness her story unfolding and her subsequent fall from grace, we begin to truly appreciate her fortitude in making the best of her circumstances through the only means available to her. This Emily may not be the loud, over-bearing Peranakan matriarch that we have come to imagine, but she is just as powerful in an understated way.

As a monologue, Emily of Emerald Hill is perhaps easier to manage for a nomadic performance. Given that this is the first of a series of productions that Desert Wine’s Comfort Theatre aims to stage in the heartlands, it would be interesting to see if strong performances can be coaxed out of ensembles as this would add more variability to each performance.

“A Richly-Coloured History Of Singapore”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 3 July 2016

There is a lot that can go wrong in four and a half hours, but Hotel isn’t one of them.

It is impossible not to be impressed when you come face-to-face with the richly-coloured set and costumes, or when you hear the cast effortlessly going through nine languages with perfect accents. The backbone of their performances is a script by Alfian Sa’at and Marcia Vanderstraaten, which remains witty even while dealing with sensitive historical material.

In short, Hotel manages to keep its historical re-telling current. Take the opening sketch about the 1915 Sepoy Mutiny. A mention of the need for alcohol control despite the mutineers being sober draws parallels with the events in Little India in 2013. Another running thread is the critique against essentialising race. The play challenges assumptions of race, most heart-wrenchingly through the barbarism inflicted by the police onto Hakim (Ghafir Akbar), an innocent trader who is suspected of being a potential terrorist threat to the country.

Hotel starts off as a series of unrelated sketches, but these come together in the second half to show. For example, the love child of a Japanese officer (Moo Siew Keh) and a local Malay woman (Sharda Harrison), whom we meet in 1945, returns 40 years later to find his mother. Azizah (Siti Khalijah Zainal), who meets P Ramlee (Ghafir Akbar) in 1955, makes an appearance in 2005 with her son Hakim (Ghafir Akbar). While the play mostly finds a balance between serious and amusing, the second half of the play appears sombre and darker, in part weighed down by the sketch of 2005. It raises the question of whether this play too may have fallen victim to our tendency of romanticising the past and vilifying they present.

While Hotel takes a journey through time, it remains confined within the physical space of one hotel suite. The setting is eminently suitable. Like guests in a hotel, the stories fleetingly occupy the stage, some leaving a stronger mark on their surroundings than others, some returning in the future, all unique in their own way.

If the hotel room be Singapore and Singapore be home, then it is worth observing that in the final scene, we are told that the notion of home could be an illusion, that we are all just travellers passing through it. Sobering as the thought may be, Hotel reminds us that it is the travellers that breathe life into the physical space of the room, through the lives they lead and the stories they create. For a country born of immigration, there cannot be a greater truth.

“Delightful, unique and funny, but could be better explained”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 17 June 2016

Forty-five minutes of non-stop laughter interspersed with utter confusion may be a rather mind-boggling description, but it is best way I can sum up the experience of watching Balek Kampung.

Through its plot, Balek Kampung draws comparisons between satirical sketch shows and futuristic dystopian storylines. The play sets Singapore a hundred years in the future, where the country is ruled by an artificial consciousness composed of the minds of the greatest Singapore leaders and citizens. While the premise is unique, the execution lacks coherence and leaves too many unanswered questions that mar the experience of the production. For instance, we never learn why the AI has a spiritual awakening, or where the alien written language that it uses comes from. There is also a disjunction between how ‘Balek Kampung’ appears to be a radio broadcast by Symphonic 924, but the memories dredged up by the AI are visual rather than auditory.

That is not to say that Balek Kampung doesn’t entertain. Playwright David Khoo has a gift for comedy and the funny moments make the play a delight to watch. From the news reports of uncles not wanting to be uncles in Singapore 2115 to the antics of Give-Way Glenda and Move-In Martin in the present, the audience is left in stitches. Actor Darren Guo deserves praise for his comedic portrayals, beginning with his perfectly gormless look during a sketch on ‘VR Man’ and his arch-nemesis ‘Click-Click Man’, to his version of Phua Chu Kang that could give Gurmit Singh a run for his money. Hadfiz Abdul Rahman dons a sari for his hilarious portrayal of a stereotypical Indian auntie during the Phua Chu Kang sketch. Through the play, David Khoo demonstrates a breadth of knowledge on Singapore culture, grounding the play in Singapore despite its futuristic premise.

As an idea, Balek Kampung is promising, but the script could do with more tightening to address the questions and inconsistencies. That said, I would love to see more from David Khoo in the future.

“More than just entertainment”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 15 May 2016

I should begin this review with the actual subject matter of this play. After all, a title like Meenah and Cheenah definitely piques curiosity. This production is a series of sketches that poke fun at the stereotypes of the Malays and Chinese in Singapore. After all, in the name of racial harmony and in real life, we simply do not jest about race.

It is in this very act of rebellion that Meenah and Cheenah entertains. Blunt and no holds barred, this show embraces those unflattering stereotypes and makes them funny. This comes as no surprise as lead writer Alfian Sa’at has never shied away from dealing with race issues. The fact that the sketches are built on real life experiences faced by the production team makes it all the more resonant.

But Meenah and Cheenah is not just about race. It also takes potshots at current and historical affairs. In its imaginative take on afterlife, there are parking aunties and CPF… and a pontianak riding one of those two-wheeled electric balancing scooters. Hang Li Po in hindsight is actually victim of human trafficking who faces major linguistic and cultural difficulties when she arrives in Malacca.

Despite charging through a series of unrelated sketches, the production does not feel messy. In fact, the last sketch neatly recalls the start, giving a nice touch of finality and a sense of having come full circle. The flow of the production is also kept up by Siti Khalijah and Judee Tan, who effortlessly bring energy and humour to their gamut of ‘minah’ and ‘cheena’ characters.

This production actively invites its audience to take photographs and videos, fittingly during a sketch on social media influencers. Nevertheless, I am surprised to find more people watching the show rather than taking photographs  even when they are encouraged to do so.

Meenah and Cheenah presents itself as flippant and comic, but it has daringly taken on a topic that we often turn a blind eye to – that of racial stereotyping. As it turns out, this is the third production I have seen in two months that honestly addresses ‘race’, and it is heartening to see that. By bringing these issues out into the light, these productions raise awareness and teach us to take ourselves less seriously, and if the reactions of the audience around me are any indication, it appears to be working.

In short, this production is definitely entertaining; but it does more than just entertain.

“Love, Minus The Fluff”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 27 February 2016

Sitting in the first row, I stare at empty bottles of Corona Extra and Asahi Dry Black on the stage. The stage floor is littered with peanut shells and cigarette butts. As the audience file in, two actors are already on stage, miserably drinking their problems away.

Directed by Kamil Haque, The Savage/Love Of Danny And The Deep Blue Sea combines two separate plays, Savage/Love by Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin, and Danny And The Deep Blue Sea by John Patrick Shanley, lending new meaning to each as they feed off each other. Both plays are thematically similar in exposing the jagged edges of that fluffy thing we call ‘love’.

Back in our dingy bar, which is the setting for Danny And The Deep Blue Sea, Savage/Love plays as filmed vignettes on the bar’s wall. The blue-green tinted film lends to the gritty atmosphere in the bar.

Savage/Love deals with moments in love. In this production, it is for the most part solemn, with exceptions being First Moment (sweet), Babble I, II and III (amusing), as well as Terms of Endearment (particularly touching as it is in sign language). Beggar is a key vignette here, as it marks the transition from Savage/Love into Danny And The Deep Blue Sea. Recited live in the bar by ‘Fred’ (Shivram Gopinath) as a drunken ode to a beer bottle, it is darkly amusing.

The transition is complete when Fred walks out and Danny (Ray Jones) walks in. Put this way, Danny And The Deep Blue Sea is treated as yet another vignette in Savage/Love. And savage it is. Both characters, Danny and Roberta (Marilyn White) are haunted by guilt and find redemption in each other. The violence is painful to watch. The sound of slaps makes me wince.

I found the choice of medium for these two plays to be appropriate. As a collection of moments and feelings, Savage/Love is applicable to many individual stories, and can find life across cultures, times and spaces. It is enduring in the sense that it can be revisited over and over again, even by the same person in the course of his or her life. It is like a film. In contrast, Danny And The Deep Blue Sea creates an individual story from a unique collection of moments. Like theatre, this particular story exists only for as long as it runs.

On the whole, The Savage/Love Of Danny And The Deep Blue Sea has been astute in its choice of plays. In combining existing material, it casts new light on these plays, giving us something new and different, and exposing that love isn’t that easy after all.

“A raw and intelligent exploration on gender and species”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 21 January 2016

Edith Podesta’s BITCH: The Origin Of The Female Species is an intellectual exercise packaged in a more pleasing form than textbooks. It is feminist, but it’s also very human. It delves into personal stories but also explores wider issues relating to patriarchy and gender differences. This is a lesson that keeps you interested, and at no point do you feel the urge to walk off and raid the fridge instead.

Central to this lesson is the idea of a ‘bitch’. She’s an ‘unfeminine’ woman, one who needs to be suppressed for the patriarchal system to remain unchallenged. Yet she is also a female dog, one who provides loving companionship . Through the bitch and the human (or rather, hu-MAN, the ‘storytelling animal’), Podesta explores issues ranging from the divisions between genders, divisions between species and companionship.

By juxtaposing the woman/bitch, dog/bitch and man, the play shows rather than tells how gender differences are treated as species differences. Ironically, it is the dog/bitch and man, who are of different species, that form a closer bond than the woman/bitch and man. Podesta’s script is beautifully poetic, despite the seriousness of the subject matter. The storytelling is the best part of this play. From start to finish, it hooks and draws you in. The play is free from theatrics, and Podesta and Helmut Bakaitis give performances that are very natural and raw.

The performance space itself is integrated seamlessly into this play. The wooden floor and wooden doors are part of what the dog/bitch sees. The backstage door is used to good effect when it is partially opened to allow light to stream in, giving the impression of light filtering into a home through half-opened windows. In fact, the use of lighting in the whole performance is very effective in conveying the mood of the moment – whether introspective, optimistic or dark. For the audience, all these work towards making the performance more believable and real within that performance space.

What I find interesting is that an actual dog makes an appearance at the end of the play. It’s a brave move, since animals are unpredictable. However, the collective ‘awww’ and squeals of ‘so cute’ following the dog’s appearance pretty much show that the audience has left the play and are enraptured by the canine presence.

“Casting shadows on what we take for granted”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 15 January 2016

Hikayat Sang Kancil isn’t about a smart Kancil outwitting stupid animals. It’s a story of pain and loss, loneliness and power.

The Chronicles of One and Zero: Kancil leaves us with more questions than answers, as it brings the story of the Kancil into the real world. A world where history is written by the powerful (“Those with knowledge and resources determine the outcome, even if they lose”), showcased through the juxtaposition of destruction with the whitewashed tales we know of today.

See, in this version of the Kancil’s story, the Kancil bears the burden of knowledge. She is powerless and alone in knowing that deforestation is slowly encroaching upon the forest territory. She is painfully lonely: her exploits in the forest have left behind a trail of deception. Her actions then were morally ambiguous and have consequences now. The Buaya, Monyet, Gajah and other animals plan a birthday party for her despite all she has done, but she ventures off by herself instead, knowing she is smarter than all of them.The Siput still harbours a strong grudge against her.

The journey through this production is intense. An incongruous combination of traditional theatre and computer-generated graphics set to a backdrop of haunting electronic sounds. This odd mix creates a sense of displacement that is both uncomfortable and disturbing. The treatment of the Kancil’s story, which fluctuates between seriousness and flippancy, shocks and disrupts. Just imagine – your senses assaulted with flashing lights and loud sounds as a screaming Kancil discovers that everything is lost. And then, that story cheerfully recounted to the tune of Injit Injit Semut, set to visuals of an 8-bit video game.

The production feels to me like an experiment in forms. This is the first time Safuan Johari and Brandon Tay, who design the sound and visuals respectively, are doing theatre. The inexperience shows, as the visuals and sound don’t feel like theatre or theatre-appropriate. In fact, the light-hearted chatter between the animals in the beginning has me wondering how this can possibly work. But then, the rug gets pulled out from under my feet and the story takes a darker turn. At this point, I realise how effectively the combination immerses the audience in the storytelling.

Gloria Tan, the sole performer, pushes herself from role to role, seamlessly and energetically transitioning from Buaya to Monyet to Kancil. Helped by the visuals, she holds dialogues with the other animals. Her performance is commanding and emotional, and the stage feels full despite there being just one actor.

Watching children’s stories get transformed this way leaves me wondering: what do we actually know, and what do we not know? What are we taking at surface value? Who writes the stories we read, regardless of whether it’s children’s tales or newspaper articles? What is left out? The production definitely leaves an impression. Eavesdropping on the conversations around me as I exit the theatre, I realise that I am not the only person asking these questions.