“Here’s Another (Nearly) Immersive Performance”

Reviewer: Cordelia Lee
Performance: 17 November 2019

Teaspoons clink against the interior of glass mugs, producing the signature soundscape of a kopitiam – Singapore’s no-frills coffeeshops. Chatter pervades the air, delivered in multiple languages. The shuffling of slippers precedes yet another drink order, hollered in dialect for immediate processing. Chairs shift, plates clatter, and an Asian koel cries intermittently, contributing to the cacophony. Save for the air-conditioning in the space, The Second Breakfast Company’s immersive theatre production, The Hawker, is a laudable simulation of a kopitiam.

The cast joins us around circular tables littered with dirty dishes and half-filled mugs. We watch up-close as their interactions unearth the stories and relationships that coalesce in this fictional eating joint.

Five vignettes concurrently play out in the space, rotating among the tables in a round-robin manner. A chance encounter between ex-army buddies gets heated at one table, while a married couple grapples with difficult decisions at another. Elsewhere, social inequality and peer pressure sway schoolgirls towards a questionable choice, a foreign worker makes an important call home, and religious differences jeopardise a blossoming relationship.

Given the performance set-up, it’s a miracle that the cast’s lines do not amalgamate into an incomprehensible whole.

Sure, my gaze periodically flits to a performer slamming the neighbouring table, and at times I overhear someone pacifying his mother over the phone. But these moments are conscientiously coordinated, executed at a volume loud enough to jointly recreate the aural ambience of a busy coffeeshop without overpowering individual vignettes. Despite overlaying sounds and the white noise of conversation, the atmosphere at my table remains largely undisturbed. Each visiting vignette is hence able to unravel organically, exuding a distinctive flavour that rivets my attention.

The Hawker’s physical environment enthrals, its character’s plights provoke empathy, and I’m undeniably invested in the scenes that collectively present the humble coffeeshop as a microcosm of Singaporean society.

But something is amiss about this immersive work. We, the audience, are invisible and uninvolved.

Physically, the performance space and auditorium have merged; yet an impenetrable fourth wall remains to encircle the cast wherever they go, enclosing them in a fictional realm that we see and feel but are unable to independently interact with or explore.

I acknowledge that having an all-knowing audience, one privy to every development in the fictional world, necessitates this performance convention. Its existence, however, limits a truly immersive experience, re-establishing instead the conventional theatrical expectation of passive spectatorship.

Yes, immersive theatre is a performance genre that prioritises spatial design, where tactile and sensual environments contain visceral stimuli. The Hawker nails this part.

But equally important in immersive theatre is making the audience central to the action, privileging them with a purpose and sense of agency throughout. Immersive works need an audience to exist.

It’s a shame The Hawker feels that it doesn’t, promising an “immersive” experience that isn’t quite so.

“Out of place and time“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 1 June 2018

This production of The Moon Is Less Bright, directed by Adeeb Fazah, is hilarious. Unfortunately, Moon is no comedy. It is an earnest play with not-so-subtle anti-colonial sentiments and communist overtones. Written by Goh Poh Seng in 1964, it is very much the product of the playwright’s particular cultural context and time at which it was written. Experienced today, with minimal script edits and a mostly realistic staging, the play simply feels too anachronistic to be taken seriously.

This was Goh’s first foray into playwriting, and there are various issues with the script itself – most obviously the language. Evidencing his middle class upbringing, Irish education and a stint living in London, Goh’s characters – never mind that they are rural farmers in Singapore during the Japanese Occupation – all speak British English of a register that would likely sound outmoded even in Britain today. In the opening scene alone, Poh Suan, a farmer’s wife, constantly interjects with “don’t blaspheme”, which makes me wonder if I have ever heard that word used in spoken language. When characters greet each other with “how do you do”, I almost expect them all soon to sit down to tea and scones.

Adding to the unwieldy use of language is the communist fervour of several of the characters, most apparently Ah Seng, Poh Suan and her husband Kim Hong’s elder son. Lines glorifying the “courage” of the people who “toil” on the land, and the “righteous struggle for emancipation”, sound like they came straight out of a communist propaganda leaflet.

Although the Director’s Foreword in the programme suggests (rightly) that class inequality is still a pertinent issue today, the play’s repetitive trope – waxing lyrical about the strength and goodness of farmers, and condemning the laziness and evil of city-dwellers – makes it hard to relate to inequality in today’s Singapore.

The characters as written in the play are one-dimensional. It is a challenge that proves too great for the inexperienced cast, who are not quite able to handle the awkward language and limited characterisation inherent in the script. Most resort to playing up their characters’ stereotypes: the sullen and abrasive Ah Seng (Benjamin Koh), whose lines are mostly limited to tirades about class struggles, is hardly believable when he confesses to his brother Ah Huat that he is in love with their cousin Choo Leng. Leng (Cheryl Tan) herself is all bouncy, innocent ingénue, and Chee Hoon (Qotn Van.S.Y), Leng’s aunt, is the intolerable snob with the exaggerated upper-class accent.

Staging decisions are also strange. Unnecessary set and lighting changes disrupt the flow of the performance; at one point in Act 1 it is difficult to fathom why the characters themselves are moving parts of their house in mid-scene and mid-conversation.

The question that I ponder – not just with this play but with all plays that are clearly of a certain time – is, why choose to stage it today, and in a way that does little to either shed light on its “historical” value, or highlight its relevance to today’s audience?