PIGEONS by Buds Theatre Company

“Pigeons”

Reviewer: Muhammed Faizad Bin Salim
Performance: 30 January 2015

Would you feed pigeons, encouraging them to populate and embrace them as part of the landscape or would you avoid them like the plague and hope you won’t be blessed by their droppings?

Or worse still, would you make it your life’s mission to eradicate them off the face of the earth?

What on the surface appears to be a glimpse into the lives of two ordinary teenage boys very quickly degenerates into something much darker. Ashley (played endearingly by Ebi Shankara) and his best mate Amir (Khairul aka Kaykay) swiftly become pawns in the larger socio-political game of life.

The dark themes in the narrative are echoed in the lighting design – for a significant amount of time at the start of the play, Karl (played by Lian Sutton) has his face hidden from the audience’s view as he walks and delivers his lines. He lurks in the background, in the shadows silently observing the other characters. Towards the end of the play, in the café scene, it comes to light (quite literally) that Karl is no innocent bystander but a menacing mastermind.

Overall, the cast has great chemistry with one another and does justice to the script – although some are more successful than others when delivering the British accent. There are genuinely hilarious scenes of the two protagonists just getting high, wasted and crashing a car as well as cute, flirtatious scenes between Ashley and Amir’s sister Aminah (Nur Sahirrah Safit) which are crucial in varying the tempo and the mood of an otherwise serious play.

The set was simple and meant to mimic a cartoonish / fantasy world (according to director Claire Devine in the programme booklet). I am not quite sure if it achieved that desired effect. The set changes could be a bit faster and more fluid as the changes affect the momentum of the play and makes the different scenes come across as separate vignettes instead of being part of a larger narrative.

Be warned also of the abrupt ending to this 75-minute play: it was rather strange having the house lights come on immediately after something horrific happens to one of the protagonists and having a front-of-house staff address you as school-going children, demanding that you vacate the building immediately because of what has just transpired. It was the only time in the play that the audience was addressed directly. Whilst not quite gelling with the rest of the play, it does make you think of how complicit the audience was in the turn of events both in the play as well as in real life.

Are we passive observers of the injustices that surround us?

Have we been unwitting perpetrators of hate, racism and bigotry?