“Journey to Nowhere: Subversive, political take on a renowned classic tale”

Writer: Isaac Lim
Performance: 23 October 2020

Journey to Nowhere is a witty, twisted interpretation of the once-banned Ming dynasty literary classic, Journey to the West. I found it provocative, yet fun to watch.

Written and directed by Oliver Chong, and performed by the graduating cohort of NAFA’s Diploma in Theatre (English Drama), it was staged and streamed online as part of The Finger Players’ season Present/Future. Chong first created Journey for another art school, and the play was previously performed in 2009, in the shadow of a global financial crisis and the swine flu pandemic, and when Obama first took office in the US. Times may have changed, but the work remains fresh today, especially in the chaotic times of another pandemic, with political struggles happening internationally, and in the digital age of impersonations and fake news.

Journey is about the power struggle between gods, humans and monsters. The narrative loosely follows the original classic, with some contemporary twists to the characters. An alcohol-abusing Monkey is banished from the Heavens by God because of his mischief. He is tasked to help a monk, Tripitaka, travel to the Western Heavens to collect true scriptures. Along the way, they are joined by Bobby (later revealed to be Pigsy), a lovelorn, half-pig and half-man creature, whose fiancé commits suicide because of their arranged marriage. The trio runs into demons and monsters, including Rabbit, who swaps bodies with a human being in a bid to deceive and kill people and collect hearts for good karma.

In this Journey, Monkey refers to God endearingly as Father, and is promised ruling powers if he completes this task of guiding Tripitaka to the West. The princely God, who appears suave and charming and dressed like a Korean boyband member, is a fresh departure from previous sage-like depictions of the character. Tripitaka too, is a hip monk, played by a female actor with a bald headpiece.

The fantastical genre allows for some choreographed violence and extreme gore. There are some stylised wushu fighting between Monkey, Bobby and Rabbit. We see palpitating hearts removed from the characters to prove innocence, and supposed sacrifice of (puppet) babies to create an elixir of life.

The simple set, with three black and white concentric circles on the floor, creates a mystical playground for the drama. The key characters travel around the circles on their journeys, seemingly lost or going nowhere at times.

The graduating students aren’t only tasked with acting in Journey. They jump around and perform gymnastics on stage effortlessly. Part of the ensemble is tasked to play a variety to instruments, including a mix of percussions made with everyday items like cans and wooden boxes, to create a layered sonic soundscape, designed by Jing Ng. They don intricately designed masks designed by Chan Si Lei, who experimented with 3D printing for the first time. In a shift away from the classic tale, Monkey is given a white choker in place of a headband, which suffocates him whenever Tripitaka chants the magic phrase.

Journey presents us with a world where beasts are at odds with rebels. Living in a country where no rebels are allowed, I found comfort in the play’s familiar setting, as much as this familiarity should actually be unnerving. In a year where political upheavals are happening across the world, along with misinformation and frauds tearing the Internet apart, Journey reminds us to look beyond masks and appearances, to look within for possible answers, and asks for us to constantly question the ruling powers.

“Between Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: From stage to screen”

Writer: Teo Xiao Ting
Performance: 6 November 2020

Sitting at home, viewing the livestream recording of Between Devil and the Deep Blue Sea after witnessing it live just two days before gave me an uncanny sense of displacement. An acute sense of flittering between two worlds: one constrained by the rectangular glow of my laptop screen, and the other sprawling free in the material world. I remember clearly details of the set, the disorientation catalysed by the performance’s intensity, and warm presence of other people sharing the space with me, as I viewed the livestream recording. Because I have had the privilege of witnessing both versions of the performance so close in time, its differences are made all the starker.

The last production project before students of NAFA’s Diploma in Theatre graduate, Devil was first staged in 2004, after The Finger Players’ first artistic overhaul. It is fitting, then, that this performance came at a time of re-examining the past to find a way towards the future, as part of TFP’s Present/Future season.

For an hour, I follow characters with generic names such as Man, Wife, Woman and Girl as the Devil haunts them. Nameless, with descriptive identities printed in plain text on t-shirts, it seems that they are meant to be caricatures of everyday people in Singapore. The Devil, too, expands into an ensemble of demons that hover and pull at the characters as they move through different circumstances and narrative scenes. Spaces within the set are clearly demarcated by white tape on the ground, mimicking the floorplan of a three-room HDB flat. The set is sparse and simple, filled with props made of cardboard, labelled the way Devil’s characters are – with plain text labels. This simplicity simultaneously brings Devil further into a space of abstraction, and also firmly roots it in reality. The characters could be anyone of us, living out lives anywhere in Singapore.

Devil opens with two Men (Linus Lim and Dzulkarnaen Djohan) mirroring each other’s movements as they wash up before a sink. What follows is a cacophony of noises we typically hear in a HDB corridor—a Woman rushing through the narrow hallways shouting that she is late, a Girl who is protesting against taking the ‘O’ level examinations, and the karang guni Man yelling for recyclables. The chaos ends only when a Grandmother, incensed, throws everyone who is screaming offstage, one by one.

The synchronicity set up by the two Men extends beyond the opening sequence — the cast is split into two permutations, each echoing the same lines. In Act One for example, on one side of the stage, we see a grandmother trying to convince her grandson to stay in Singapore, while on the other side of the stage, another grandmother and grandson pair have the exact same conversation. The repetition carries through to the other two acts, with two sets of the same family in each act.

There is some variation in language, such as how each grandson addresses his grandmother either as Ah Ma (Winnie Ng) or Patti (Hannah Sonia). There are also subtle differences in tone between the two sets of characters. For example, when one Man (Lim) retorts that he would sooner buy a coffin for his grandmother, the cruel edge of his voice cuts through the cold of the theatre. On the flipside, the other Man (Djohan), with a slightly softer intonation, made the same words sound more like a cheeky, albeit disrespectful, response.

Where the replicating sets of performances happens onstage in front of my eyes in the live performance, the livestream video frames each set separately, cutting between the two consecutively. The former experience let me feel the dread of an inescapable pattern in the lives of the characters, while the latter invited comparison, making clearer the differences between the two sets. Therein lies a fundamental difference in the two experiences: the live version feels to be a cohesive tapestry, while the livestream video makes the play feel unnervingly fragmented.

Perhaps this is the crux of what exactly gives way in a translation from stage to screen. Where live performance demands my entire body to be present as I witness the happenings that are unfolding in front of me, a recording encased in a screen makes for a more dissonant experience. We are still in the thick of grappling with the loss of what we know theatre to be, and part of the grief is a desire to return to a time where the loss had yet to occur.

I am currently training to be a counsellor. During my course, I was introduced to a technique called the “miracle question”. Like how it sounds, it’s a pivoting question that allows one to shift their thoughts towards the speculative, the what-if of how things are. In the case of theatre, perhaps the miracle question would be a complete return of theatre in its pre-pandemic form, or even to approach a semblance of its former self.

But as my course lecturer gently reminds me, the miracle question cannot slip into the delusional. For us, we cannot leave out a world that has been irrevocably changed by COVID-19.

What seems to be more reasonable is to ask how the magic of theatre can translate from stage to screen, without unfairly comparing the two. How can we allow the effervescence of collaboration, of sharing a stage or screen with another, to show up in different but no less concrete ways? I have no clear answer, but as the image of both Grandmothers in Devil glows in front of me, waving goodbye to both their grandsons and the audience at the edge of the stage, I think to myself that maybe this is not the time for answers, that it is okay to be in suspension as we continue to grapple with this time.

“Peepbird: Decay and transformation”

Writer: Teo Xiao Ting
Performance: 8 October 2020

Peepbird opens with Al-Matin Yatim and Vanessa Toh emerging with slick black feathers extending from their shoulders, arms dangling and legs twisting as though they are hatchlings learning how to walk for the first time. The strangeness of being in this new world bleeds through their bodies as they stutter across the stage with feathered limbs, and they preen each other as though trying to comfort one another. Jo Kwek enters soon after, a woman transfixed by these feathered beings. Her gaze follows Toh and Yatim relentlessly as she hovers. She lifts her limbs in an attempt to mimic their movements. Although I cannot see her face covered by a huge black hat, her desire to become these winged beings is palpable. The trio’s tentative movements resonate with how we have all regressed to newborns, trying to relearn how to be again.

Stepping into the Esplanade Recital Studio for the first time since COVID-19 on 7 Oct 2020 felt like an initiation into a whole new world. The effusive warmth I thought I would feel from the return of live performance gave way to apprehension, emerging from the same unease I’ve felt for months now since the theatres closed and talks of a “new normal” proliferated my social media feed. This sentiment is not unique – there are others who wrote of this loss and sadness, such as Jocelyn Chng for ArtsEquator, who described her own return to theatre. This world feels to be in the midst of transformation, with everything shifting in unnervingly tectonic ways.

For the next 60 minutes, I watch on as Kwek weaves through larger-than-life crow puppets, animated by Yatim and Toh. She desires to become a puppet herself, as her limbs, unadorned by feathers, twitch to mirror the feathered movements of the puppets. But her first attempt at transformation is futile – she remains as she is, a flightless human. My heart sinks as she slides onto the bench, seemingly fusing with the cool grey concrete. Was she giving up? I recall giving up, at some point during this long-drawn pandemic, sinking into myself, unwilling to emerge. At this very moment, the rhythm of the soundscape built by Darren Ng picks up speed and shakes me out of my reverie. The increasingly urgent cacophony of strings seems to declare, “No, it’s not time to give up.” The transformation is still ongoing, and Kwek’s journey to become a crow herself is not yet done. We are not yet done.

Then comes the first transformation, the most intense sequence in the hour I share with Peepbird. The stage floods with a dim red light, and a flurry of black feathers circle Kwek as she wrestles with Toh and Yatim, who are trying to envelope her in a dark fabric larger than herself. Draped entirely in black, it is almost impossible to tell where the puppets end and puppeteers begin. There are no attempts to hide the puppets’ moving mechanisms, and I can clearly see the puppeteers’ bodies moving behind each twitch of a wing, each sharp turn of the head. The visibility of their bodies makes me think of the crow-puppets as characters, as conduits for mimicry. This makes Kwek’s desire all the more poignant, as the crows she wants to become can never achieve true flight; they can only rely on their puppeteers to mimic wing movements.

As the tussle between the puppets, Kwek, Toh and Yatim stretches on, I almost concede that Kwek will never emerge. Just as I start to feel the cold dread of despair, her head peeks out, revealing her new self, now donned with the same black feathers as those that had previously engulfed her. Her human identity discarded, she cocks her head as though she is unsure of how to be now that she has arrived at her destination, as a crow. What now? As if to cast doubt on the desirability of being a crow-puppet, the same crow-puppet that was the subject of Kwek’s obsession is torn apart by the very same pair of hands that had enlivened it. As Toh yanks the puppet apart and its innards splay across gunny sacks spread out on the floor, Yatim perches close by, simply observing, unmoved by the carnage. This act of violence seems wholly natural, in order to make room for other puppets, other crows, other beings.

In the midst of dissonant rumbling strings and the engulfing shadowy costumes – designed by MAX.TAN – the darkness of Peepbird is inescapable. In another review of Peepbird written by Nabilah Said for ArtsEquator, she confesses a desire for celebration and colour, something effervescent to mark the (tentative) return of live performance. A part of me shares her desire, but another part of me is grateful for Peepbird’s honest reflection of this murky period, how it materialises the tangle of thoughts and emotions we have collectively felt for months as livelihoods and plans decay right in front of our eyes, as we are helpless to do anything to stop it. The image of decay is deeply embedded in Peepbird, though it is not as simple as dust to dust — it is inextricable from metamorphosis. Kwek’s own metamorphosis mirrors how my body reactivates and reorients itself as I come to be in the presence of live performance again. I find myself craning closer to the stage to be nearer to the electric energy of living bodies moving other bodies.

At the end of the play, Toh emerges from the backstage now draped in white feathers. It is a stark contrast to her previous self, which was covered entirely in black. Unlike Kwek’s transformation, I am not privy to Toh’s process; it seems almost like magic the way she disappears only to reappear completely changed. The only constant throughout the second half of the play is the crow-puppet, previously eviscerated by Toh, swept under the gunny sacks.

There is something both hopeful and devastating in what I witnessed. In Peepbird, the process of transformation is necessarily violent. A previous reality has to be ruptured in order to make room for a new one. I think of words conjured by Rebecca Solnit in A Field Guide to Getting Lost: “The early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar…the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay”. Peepbird cuts right into the chrysalis of whatever this current time is, and made a space for me to confront this strange new world as it swivels, in all its decays and joys.

“A Fiend’s Dairy”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 27 October 2019

A Fiend’s Diary by The Finger Players is a monologue depicting the inner world of a socially-isolated man (played by Oliver Chong). This man lives in an apartment alone, with only the frenzied words of his diary and the intermittent sounds (created by Darren Ng) of his body bumping against furniture to keep him company. Through the narrations in his diary, we come to understand how he sees the people that make up his social world.

The walls, floor, table of the protagonist’s room is covered with the text from the script. The orderly lines in which the words are written obscure the inherent chaos of the content. The man has just begun to reflect and grieve the passing of his closest kin – his mother. However, ‘grieving’ is an illusory word in this context, as this man does not exhibit or articulate his feelings of loss toward his mother in a way that may be recognisable as grieve. Or perhaps, this man is not grieving at all, as he spends the day of his mother’s funeral smoking and drinking with the funeral director. Over the course of the play, we see him in a range of situations that become increasingly absurd and questionable, from agreeing to marry a girl he does not care for, to ultimately a horrendous crime.

Despite how morally unredeemable the protagonist is, however, Chong’s performance still makes me feel sympathy towards him. At the court scene where the man is put on trial, I find myself taking both the side of the jury – who are horrified by his action and apathy – as well as the man, who is indignant that his defence is not truly taken into account because of the jury’s assumptions about him.

The radical empathy that this self-reflective play forces us to take on makes us question our own assumptions of morality.

“The Many Prongs of Forked”

Reviewer: Isaac Tan
Performance: 18 August 2019

Under Chong Tze Chien’s direction, the latest staging of Forked by Jo Tan has evolved into a monodrama, performed by the playwright herself.

Inspired by her experiences in Paris when she was learning clowning, Tan’s play is centred on Jeanette, who goes to London to study drama. She struggles with her sense of identity as her school mates from various countries have certain expectations of her, while her crusty French acting teacher demands for her to be natural and speak in her “native language”.

There is a sense of normative determinism with this play. The search for identity places Forked well within Singapore’s tradition of monodramas, while the plot is in tune with the recent crop of plays that feature the acting profession in various ways.

Additionally, the displacement that Jeanette feels on a personal level mirrors that of Singapore in the international arena. Jeanette finds herself resisting both the residual colonial ideas of orientalism and her mainland Chinese school mate Yum Yum’s outlook that “Chinese people should help Chinese people.”

Yet, when there is a casting opportunity for a television series by a director looking for a bilingual East Asian actress, Jeanette is not beyond asking Yum Yum to coach her in Mandarin, or play up to certain stereotypes. But that ultimately leaves her feeling hollow, bringing the show to its climatic moment.

Tan’s versatility as a performer is well known within the theatre scene. Her ability to run through the gamut of accents and her comic physicality in embodying various characters have been much fêted. Her doing that with a toe injury intensifies the praises.

For me, the true mark of her versatility is her ability to continue the trajectory of the scene through her intentional play-acting without letting it become a full-blown vaudeville act. She also manages to inject pathos or bathos immediately when she changes character and deliver a smart quip or revelation.

That said, the presentation of the supporting characters in broad stereotypes does lose its comic novelty, even though the patient viewer is rewarded by discovering that they are also presenting a version of themselves to the world towards the last quarter of the play.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the wonderful design elements that enhance the play. Darren Ng’s cinematic sound design echoes Jeanette’s idealised version of England as presented by popular British movies. This is complemented by Chan Silei’s set, which has only the top frame of old English street lamps suspended at the sides of the space.

Also, there is a cleverness to Lim Woan Wen’s lighting design with standing lamps casting Tan’s shadows of varying sizes, or the flashing of boxes of light on the walls to create the illusion of the passing Underground train.

Thematically and aesthetically, Forked has grown into a complex play that leads us down many roads of discovery and contemplation. With the director admitting that the piece is still a work-in-progress, one cannot wait to see the next incarnation of the piece.

“Special Education teacher’s exasperation or a call to action?”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 9 March 2019

Not in My Lifetime? is a play about many things. It is about the love two Special Education teachers have for their students, which drives them to continue their seemingly futile efforts to push for educational reforms. It is also about the emotional exhaustion and vulnerability that comes with teaching children with special needs, when their improvement may not be measured by Singapore’s KPI-obsessed culture. Ultimately, this nuanced performance provides a space for Special Education teachers to embrace the entirety of their experiences – the good, the bad, and the unanswered questions.

At Gateway Theatre, the stage is bare apart from a human-sized dice, toddler-sized chairs and an ominous figure lurking at the back of the stage. At the start of the play, it is explained that the figure is Mr. Wrinkle, a mysterious mentor figure who is referenced throughout the play. We never get to see what Mr. Wrinkle looks like; we only get to see the back of his large wooden chair, which is draped with his coat. However, we hear him through the disembodied voice of Timothy Nga.

The two main characters of the performance arrive on the stage. Inch Chua portrays a bubbly and optimistic teacher who, at the start of her journey as a Special Education teacher, is full of hope. She looks up to an older and more experienced teacher (Evelyn Chye) as a mentor figure, who is portrayed by actress Evelyn Chye. As the play goes on, the younger teacher becomes more jaded and tired. These two teachers are not particularly complex characters, but they are familiar and compelling.

The play succeeds in conveying the frustrations of Special Education teachers through simple and effective examples, making the play’s message accessible to everyone. For instance, the fact that students in regular schools were given proper thermometers during the SARS epidemic, while students in Special Education schools were given unreliable disposable fever strips, shows the unequal treatment of the two groups.

In a more physical and embodied scene, we see the teachers’ despair as a student experiences a breakdown, which is enacted through the violent wringing and crumbling of an unseen actor covered by a blanket. I find this dark and heartfelt scene especially poignant, as I can see both the teacher and the student in their irreconcilable emotional frustrations.

The play does not shy away from its message. The uphill task of pushing for change is portrayed as a climb up a ladder, while the unique challenges of educating students with special needs – which should be carried by the whole society – is portrayed by the actors carrying a sewn amalgamation of bags and cloth. But while these metaphors allow the message to be portrayed succinctly, I wonder if the emotional and moral weight is truly conveyed.

Not in My Lifetime? seems to be a story that’s told out of exasperation. However, it is clear that despite the exhaustion, these teachers still hope for changes that would make our society truly inclusive.

“Too deep in the plot“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 16 June 2018

Can even the devil be capable of beauty? This is one of several intriguing thoughts surrounding art and politics raised within the first act of Framed, by Adolf. Framed, the second piece in a thematic trilogy by playwright and director Chong Tze Chien centred on Hitler, is quite unlike his earlier non-linear, non-realistic work, Starring Hitler as Jekyll and Hyde (2016).

Framed opens with The Seller (Serene Chen) having separate conversations with The Professor (Tan Shou Chen), The Auctioneer (Timothy Nga) and The Buyer (Darius Tan) about a painting, allegedly by Hitler, that she is attempting to sell. We are snappily transported between the different characters’ offices by light and sound cues and some cleverly crafted dialogue, as the conversations throw up a variety of questions – about whether seeing Hitler as an artist is reconcilable with his politics, the ethics of appreciating his art, and the politics and ethics of the commercial art market.

Unfortunately, many of the thoughts and questions raised in the strong first act of the play remain where they are, while the rest of the play tends to get lost in the unravelling of an overly complicated narrative. As The Seller proceeds to relate the story of her grandfather (Joshua Lim) and his remarkable life that is intertwined with the painting, much of the ensuing narrative becomes plot-driven. It hardly develops the earlier interesting ideas, and does not reveal much about the Holocaust that we don’t already know.

The decision to create a play about Hitler and the Holocaust is itself curious in relation to the local context. Of course, most would likely agree that the topic is and will always be relevant in the history of mankind in a general sense, especially given the many genocidal regimes that sadly still exist today. However, there is something awkward about watching a play set in Nazi Germany – or in an ambiguous contemporary European context – while hearing almost all the characters speak in recognisably Singaporean accents.

I am also unsure about the use of shadow puppetry against the cyclorama to indicate moving scenery and changes in setting. Perhaps because of the nostalgia and heroic drama associated with shadow puppetry in the Southeast Asian context, its use in the play is sometimes evocative of a romantic idea of history – not quite in line with associations of Auschwitz and the other wartime settings represented in the play. Furthermore, the rest of the set consists of pieces that are largely realistic representations of the time period and setting. The use of puppetry in Framed thus sits uncomfortably, despite it being a signature element of The Finger Players’ work.

At its heart, Framed is a work with a compelling premise, but its potential significance is unfortunately obscured by the overly narrative-driven approach. It will be interesting to see how the third work in Chong’s trilogy will deal with one of the darkest times in modern history.

《因死而知生—— POOP! 由影而看见光的反向思考》

Reviewer: Neo Hai Bin | 梁海彬
Performance: 22 October 2017

Drip

死亡是什么？《便便》通过一个8岁小女孩的思考和想像去叩问死亡，可谓神来之笔。只有死人熟悉死亡，活着的人对死亡的理解恐怕和小孩相去不远呢。

因为祖母的一番诠释，在小女孩的世界里，生与死的界限荡然无存，观众也被带到一个充满想像的舞台世界里。黑暗的舞台上，一片叶子或一个塑胶袋子会充满生命般地飘然起舞；一张脸会和一只脚同时出现在台上的不同地方；忽然出现又忽然消失的人与物，突然拉近又突然相距甚远的几个空间……

观众很容易认同。我们何尝不是这样去想像死亡？例如死亡是另一个空间；死亡的颜色是黑暗的；死去的人似乎总是无所不在，又似乎总是在我们的空间里留下诺大的缺口。

但《便便》不停留在诠释死亡而已，而是通过空间的巧妙运用，进一步质问：我们可以任意想像死亡，但在死亡面前，我们应该如何思考活着？

由这个问题展开，就要谈到《便便》的两大重要舞台元素：灯光与黑暗。灯光负责打造不同的空间，让角色穿梭在现实与想像、记忆与梦境之间。父亲死去，他的脸庞像柴郡猫（Cheshire Cat）般自由地出现与消失在任何空间里。母亲和祖母虽然活在灯光里，却被窄小的灯区局限，往往寸步难行。

只有8岁女孩有勇气直视黑暗，因为患癌的缘故，反而能够了悟死亡是一场彻底的终结。该剧在灯光的处理上带出了剧本的主题：光与影、生与死原来是一体两面，如剧中台词“circle and circle and circle”—— 唯有死亡才能带出生的意义。

《便便》由影子深处去寻找光明的反向思考，成功带出了剧本里隐显的主题，让整部戏鲜明，让观众在黑暗的剧场里一起悄悄落泪。

“灵戏“

Reviewer: Liu Chang | 刘畅
Performance: 28 October 2017

<灵戏>讲述的是“我方”的历史。

历来战争中的任何一方都有充分理由称自己为正义的“我方”，他者都被笼统地称之为“敌方”，无论从历史的角度看谁是侵略者谁是抵抗侵略者谁又是第三方。 <灵戏>暗射了二战时期日本入侵东南亚（马来亚、新加坡）这段历史，并以侵略者一方的有限视角看待战争。

战争结束后，五个因战争遗留在被侵略国度里的“我方” 鬼魂无家可归。他们又一次聚首，重温往事，控诉战争给自己及周遭亲友带来的刻骨铭心的伤害。

虽均属于“我方”，这五个鬼魂生前身份各异，死后思想亦迥然不同。将军秉承侵略者方主流意识形态，即使已化为魂灵，依然信奉穷兵黩武，推崇“残”兽的贪婪残酷精神。汉子、母亲和姑娘是这场战争中“我方”的亲历者、被动参与者、边缘人士和底层小人物。他们执念控诉的是战争对自己、家庭、亲友和战友们的身心伤害。比起前四位，诗人（记者）的悲悯之心略显广博，理性地反思侵略行为及其负面后果，颂扬神鸟“祥”的博爱与奉献，但关注的依然多是本民族的爱与伤痛，并没有过多地对被侵略民族表达关怀与同情。

<灵戏>最初由新加坡戏剧大师郭宝菎创作于1998年，抛开直接描写被侵民族伤痛的叙事传统，而以这种有限的“我方”视角真实地反映、反思了战争为侵略者一方带来的惨痛代价。一将功成万骨枯，汉子和诗人、甚至某种程度上连将军都充当了帝国的血肉资本，妈妈和姑娘则为帝国的野心扩张献出了家庭和性。

<灵戏>曾一度对主流历史叙事进行了极大的挑战，对战争依然记忆犹新的被侵民族也无法接受这种正面表现“敌方”伤痛的题材。如今二十年过去，关于世界上每一场重要的战争，交战双方、第三方等都出版了大量的资料来解密、诠释、反思和控诉，各国民众对待战争也具备了更加理性和辩证的认识。在此背景下，<灵戏>今年再次上演引起的震撼和争议也许未必强过当年，但依然有重要的反战意义，它的独特声音和精湛艺术效果不会被淹没于历史资料之中。

并且此次上演，导演使用了The Finger Players最擅长的偶戏，成功营造了战争的惨烈和鬼魂世界的诡异凄惶；并在原著的基础上添加了三个黑衣鬼的角色，分别代表了“贪”、“嗔”和“痴”，从人性和信仰的维度上反思这场战争，同时又很好地补充诠释了剧中关于神鸟“祥”和“残”兽的隐喻，更全面地展现了人性中恶与善的矛盾对立。

“The Spirits Play”

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 28 October 2017

Recently staged in 2015 at the Drama Centre Black Box, The Finger Players brings back its production of The Spirits Play, with director Oliver Chong making some changes to this production since the 2015 version.

An obvious difference would be the current production’s staging at the Victoria Theatre, a much larger, proscenium space. To this end, the set design with two levels, and the spirits’ voluminous, abstract costumes create visual interest and certainly help to fill the space. While the overall staging design, including live sound and puppetry, is generally effective in evoking a dark, melancholy yet contemplative atmosphere, the spirits’ slightly over-the-top costumes may have detracted slightly from that contemplative mood.

The Spirits Play, one of the last pieces by playwright Kuo Pao Kun’s plays, deals with the horrors of war – the waste and despair that it brings for all involved, regardless of whose side they are on. The play is a challenging one to perform, not least because of the heavy subject matter. In this version, a lot of focus is also required for the almost one hour and forty-five-minute running time, during which the characters of the General, Man, Mother and Girl never leave the stage.

They begin almost as if at an annual gathering, remarking on the weather, enquiring after one another; but their awkward, stilted tone tells you something is not quite right. As the play progresses, we hear from each of them their stories, told in overlapping vignettes – weak and injured soldiers abandoned by their own commanders, a wife searching for the dead body of her husband knowing full well the futility of the undertaking, a female nurse violated by members of her own army. Against the backdrop of all this, the General expresses no remorse for his actions.
As the spirits search, accuse, reflect, and mourn over the course of the play, it becomes apparent that their questions have no answers.

The cast is strong on the whole, managing well the emotionally charged text and shifts in intensity. Where the performance is less strong, however, is in the movement. Near the beginning and end, the spirits glide around the stage in choreographed sequences – while this bookending is a clear directorial strategy, it does not feel like the relatively long movement sequences are crucial to the performance. In addition, the movements of the three characters dressed in black (who function as a chorus of sorts) can be more precise; moments of non-synchronicity detracted from the otherwise arresting visual picture.

Nevertheless, we are left with a haunting final image: the five spirits returning to their graves, falling snow, and a blackout revealing a blood red full moon. This is one of the few hints of the play’s cultural context – although the spirits are ostensibly Japanese, in this staging there are few identifiable markers of setting. All the better to reflect on the universality of the play’s underlying message; all war is cruel, no matter where or when.