“Anything can happen, and edutainment did”

Reviewer: Cordelia Lee
Performance: 7 July 2019

Wild Rice’s youth division, Young & Wild, returns for a fifth iteration.

Part lecture-performance and part experimental Shakespeare, Anything Can Happen, Something Must Happen stitches a mix of performance genres and forms onto the bard’s Macbeth.

The work plays with the delivery of its canonised source text in imaginative ways, from an interactive camp segment to table-top puppetry involving edible cookies. Every so often, it breaks production concepts down into their nuts and bolts before unabashedly thrusting them into its audience’s faces.

Admittedly, this sounds like a brutal ride. But hear me out.

A pleasant surprise awaits if – and only if – you forswear the impenetrability of the fourth wall, forget about coherent narratives, and ground your disbelief. In doing so, you’ll discover the true value of this work and may begin to appreciate it for what it inherently is – edutainment.

“This is how it sounds like when the actress speaks to the actor,” a disembodied voice resounds.

The actress on stage obediently opens her mouth. Out comes her lines, and when they are done, she freezes.

The voice returns, now making a point on the quality of lighting. The scene resumes in accordance with this new direction, playing out for a few seconds before pausing for subsequent instructions.

More stage elements are isolated and tweaked, their effects made conspicuous. It’s as though we’re in a director’s head as she creates, toying with options and watching each one materialise on stage.

Granted, this is nothing novel for theatre students and practitioners. But for the general audience who too often consumes a polished product, this delightful dissection of stage elements renders them privy to the workings of theatrical magic.

There’s more.

The production devotes part of itself to making the discourse on theatre in academia tangible and relatively accessible for its audience. Theatre luminary Peter Brook’s definition of theatre, for example, is heard in the opening scene:

“A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”

At this precise moment cast members traverse the performance area; the audience’s gaze follows them, held by this mundane act. They have validated Brook’s claims, whether or not they realise it. For those who have, the often-overlooked act of watching and being watched in the theatre is now made evident.

But more than that, the act of watching is made meaningful. It reveals the audience-performer relationship that exists within the performance space as an integral and valuable part of the theatre performance, one without which an act of theatre ceases to exist.

This production, unlike some others, is devoid of sensational storylines and glossy sets that coerce you into believing you’ve got your money’s worth.

Instead, it humbly offers something else of undeniable value: an opportunity to learn about theatre, through theatre. Not the most conventional mode of sharing knowledge perhaps, but an engaging one nonetheless.

And therein lies the production’s unmistakable charm.

“We cross our bridges and we come to them and burn them behind us”

Reviewer: Casidhe Ng
Performance: 17 February 2017

The newest cohort of Young and W!LD presents Crossings, a double bill that explores the major decisions we make in our lives and the consequences they bring.

The Mother, The Son and the Holy Ghost, the first play of the evening, showcases some interesting multimedia elements, with Natalie Koh, Aeron Ee and Jasmine Blundell performing as the eponymous characters respectively. Yet as the piece progresses, there is a nagging sense that it lacks overall coherence. The script feels clunky at parts, and in moments of dialogue, little of the comedic moments hit their mark. Over time the characters seem to be repeating their intentions rather than developing them. Ee’s “Son” doesn’t quite manage to convince, and his eventual outbursts fail to deal the expectant emotional impact. Koh tries her best to convey the senility of “Mother”, whilst Blundell’s “social justice journalist” is equal parts chirpy and annoying. But all feel hampered by the script and ultimately remain cardboard-like.

Still, there are fleeting moments of beauty. In particular, a series of tableaus set to a heartfelt rendition of Randy Newman’s “You’ve got a Friend in me”, as well as Koh’s final monologue paired with video snapshots from the perspective of the senile mother nevertheless hit their mark.

Fortunately, the second of the double bill, Arbitrio, is significantly more engaging. The piece is punctuated with fourth wall breaks, humorous asides, Bollywood dance numbers and crude interjections by a director-playwright played by an exceptional Mel Bickham. She, being the “creator” of the entire piece, manipulates the scenes as she constructs the problematic marriage of Christopher and Danielle. Krish Natarajan and Sharmaine Goh anchor the play with effective and commendable performances as the romantic leads, Christopher and Danielle, lending a genuine believability to their romance. They are well supported by Blundell as Michelle (Christopher’s mistress) and Alison Bickham as Lenora (Danielle’s lesbian partner). All this is achieved in spite of constant reminders of the play’s artifice. Amidst the drama, the ensemble finds excellent moments of comedy: whether it is in an advertisement for a marriage-saving “pussy pleaser” in the form of Lenora, or Christopher’s psychotic enactment of how he intends to murder his boss in wonderful detail, Arbitrio simply feels like tons of fun. Balancing itself with remarkable ease between its narrative and its self-referentiality whilst engaging the audience with questions of homosexuality, the piece is undoubtedly the highlight of the evening.

With Crossings, Young and W!LD continues to showcase the importance of the work it does, wherein an emphasis on theatre-making across theatrical disciplines both technical or performance-oriented is evident. At the end of the day, as the cast bids us goodbye with an uplifting Bollywood number, it is apparent that Y&W is a platform for experimentation: that the products, whether hits or misses, are nevertheless catalysts for theatre-making, opportunities through which bonds are formed and chemistry within the ensemble invariably created.