“Maid Live Under Surveillance“

Reviewer: Cordelia Lee
Performance: 13 July 2018

My palms turn numb from 30 seconds of uninterrupted applause. But for the first time, applause alone feels insufficient. I feel my bodyweight shift to my feet as I inch forward, rising from my seat.

It finally happens – my first standing ovation.

Written by local playwright Thomas Lim, Supervision comes after his acclaimed debut play, Grandmother Tongue, played to full houses in 2016 and 2017. Repeating what he does best, Lim approaches macrosocial concerns by exploring the effects they have on a micro level, within the familial sphere. Prevailing anti-foreigner sentiments and misplaced fears about migrant and domestic workers in society have led to wary locals labelling them as a dangerous “other”. Lim encapsulates these tensions through the complex characters and painfully honest dialogue in his script, exploring how this scepticism of the “other” drives local employers to infringe on domestic helpers’ privacy within the home.

Lim’s thought-provoking script materialises beautifully in the theatre, thanks to the production’s strong cast. The 90-minute performance is kept extremely tight. Lines are delivered clearly, rolling out successively without any lags; this makes even the longest dialogues easily digestible for the audience. Umi Kalthum Ismail puts up a noteworthy performance as Yanti, an unassuming Indonesian domestic worker. She effortlessly embodies familiar characteristics of the average domestic worker without falling into the trap of clichés. In addition to maintaining a consistent Indonesian accent, she pays careful attention to her physicality throughout her performance, varying it as her character faces different situations. She scurries with her head bowed in one scene, docile and obedient as Jenny (Janice Koh) sharply beckons her. In contrast, she appears more relaxed when alone with Jenny’s father, Kian Keong (Patrick Teoh), and is respectfully outspoken in their conversations. By layering her character, Umi creates an organic, multifaceted Yanti that leaves an impression on the audience.

Set and multimedia design also aptly complement the play. Regardless of where they are seated around the stage, audience members are unable to view the action unfolding in at least one of the four rooms situated at the corners of the stage. At one point, live footage of Yanti crying in her room plays on the overhead screens as hidden surveillance cameras reveal what is blocked from my view. I inevitably participate in this panoptic gaze by simply watching, and, together with Jenny, become complicit in the invasion of Yanti’s privacy. This unique directorial decision places the audience in an uncomfortable position, actively provoking them to reevaluate the validity of such normative practices in households.

To find a production that hits all the right notes thematically and performatively under two hours is a rarity. To find one that does all of that without a single glitch is to hold up a middle finger to Murphy’s Law. And as impossible as it sounds, Supervision does just that.

“Double Bill: When The Cold Wind Blows/G.F.E.“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 13 July 2018

The subject matters surrounding this double bill strike one as decidedly gender-specific: 招: When The Cold Wind Blows (written by Neo Hai Bin and directed by Thong Pei Qin), deals with National Service (NS), while G.F.E. (written and performed by Chong Woon Yong and directed by Ric Liu) has a man recounting his first visit to the red-light district of Geylang. That said, on a broader level, the themes are relatable enough not to alienate half the audience.

Presented first, Cold Wind Blows portrays Xavier, a married man with kids and living overseas, still scarred and haunted by recurring nightmares of his NS experience for the past ten years. As the interaction unfolds between Xavier and a mysterious character from his army days known only as “Man”, we are slowly let on to the ghosts (literal and metaphorical) that have been constantly haunting him… but perhaps a bit too slowly. Much of the conversation early on revolves around Xavier trying to escape from his nightmare, but being told by the Man that he cannot unless he confronts a particular truth that he is ostensibly hiding from. As the play draws on, more details about his NS experience and his increasing disillusionment with the system are revealed. However, the dramatic trajectory of the play does not develop or vary sufficiently. By the time we get to the revelation of his inadvertent misdemeanour and subsequent demotion – understandably a source of great humiliation and pain – the revelation has lost its impact.

The play also suffers from an overreliance on dramatic lighting cues and some sight line issues, as the actors sometimes enter the L-shaped audience space.

The audience is herded out during the intermission, as the stage and seating configuration is re-set for G.F.E. The only remnant from the earlier play is a single red light bulb hanging down from the rig – an interesting if slightly random attempt to link the two plays.

In G.F.E., the narrative jumps back and forth between a man’s first visit to the brothels in Geylang and his various previous relationships in a non-chronological fashion. This is an effective device that juxtaposes his thoughts about his previous girlfriends with the “girlfriend experience” (or “G.F.E.”), which some sex workers are said to provide.

Surprisingly, and a bit disconcertingly, I find myself rather entertained by a story that is (at least partly) about prostitution. Self-written and performed, the play does not fall into the trap of self-indulgence that can all too easily ensnare such a work. Part of what makes the story so compelling is that Chong tells it as it is, without moralising, which sparks genuine reflection about the ethics of the world’s oldest profession and the people who patronise it.

It is especially heartening that the language used in both plays is unabashedly colloquial. Although described as Mandarin plays, both works actually make use of Mandarin and English to almost equal degree, with some Hokkien mixed in. Such confidence in using language that closely approximates the patterns of daily Singaporean speech is still rare in local theatre, where plays tend to stick mostly to one language – usually in an unrealistically formal or “standard” register.

In line with the Singapore Theatre Festival’s aim to develop new work, and this year’s thematic focus on the memoir or biography, the spunky confidence of these two new plays is certainly to be celebrated.

“无可避免的轮回”

Reviewer: Neo Hai Bin | 梁海彬
Performance: 23 July 2016

2016年的“HOTEL”继2015年后再度与观众见面。全剧长达5小时，述说了新加坡百年来历史脉络下的11个小故事，感觉像看情景喜剧（sitcom）。14位演员诠释近50多个角色，颇像在历史中不断投胎转世。

“HOTEL”全剧以一家酒店套房作为全剧的中心点，所有的故事都发生在那间酒店套房。“酒店”作为超级清晰的意象，让这部戏变得易看、易懂、也易阅读。百年来不同的住客在酒店套房进出，对照新加坡这个地方从古至今都没有真正的“住客”，只有过客，谁都不曾“拥有”过这块土地。酒店不乏鬼故事，演员们扮演一个个历史人物，正像历史的鬼魂如实搬演曾经发生过的事件。入住酒店，就有退房的期限，本地历史的改朝换代，让我们看到每一代统治者的“入住”和“退房”，循环重复。酒店作为一个公共空间，却也是用钱就能买到的私人空间，隐藏着最私密、最不可告人的行径。光怪陆离的人类行为，在酒店里一览无遗—— 而“国家”正也是如此具阈限性的空间（liminal space）。

“酒店”的确是一个特别强烈且鲜明的比喻。观众看懂了这个剧，可惜也因此少了其他阅读的可能性。

在精辟的台词和令人捧腹大笑的情节中，我看到了历史无可避免的轮回。这也许才是该剧的最成功之处—— 借鉴历史，却对照现实。该剧选择的故事让我在看戏的同时也看到近年来的新闻报导：小印度骚乱事件、同性恋者遭受的歧视、恐怖氛围下对弱势族群的憎恨…… 原来这几年看到的新闻都不“新”，竟然都是历史长河中不断发生过的事。这让观众在观看“HOTEL”时，尽管获得了“窥看”住客隐私的绝对权利，却也加倍觉得无力与无助。观众只能被动地看戏，就像酒店员工们只能隔岸观火看住客的命运，或国家的命运。

如何超脱轮回，避免重蹈历史的覆辙？“HOTEL”没有提供答案，也没有义务提供答案。但我们需要的是属于自己的故事—— 国家论述之外的故事，小人物们的故事。而本地艺术家们所挖掘与想想的“野史”，能够让观众反思，自省—— 这也许才是新加坡人能够携手走向未来的关隘所在。

“My Mother Buys Condoms”

Reviewer: Dawn Teo
Performance: 23 July 2016

My Mother Buys Condoms is written by Helmi Yusof, an arts correspondent for The Business Times. Humorous and entertaining, the audience is invited to take a glimpse into the lives of an average Singapore family. All hell breaks loose when Maggie rediscovers love and sex at the age of 63, and she discovers this with air-conditioner repairman Raju. “It is disgusting,” Nora, Maggie’s best friend exclaims. As for her adult children, will they accept her, and each other?

The 90-minute long play unfolds in Maggie’s home – a HDB apartment. Audience members are greeted by cramped up book shelves, a sofa set, a dining table and a small fully-kitted kitchen. The set is constructed to mimic a lived-in HDB apartment and it provides the  audience members the perfect illusion that we are peering into the characters’ lives. The set firmly anchors the characters’ realities and their social environments and habits.

This piece of theatre does not shy away from controversy – sex, ageing and it questions what constitutes a “normal” family in a country such as Singapore. Instead of being overbearing or preaching, the text  presents multiple perspectives on the issues. Whether one aligns to LGBT rights or is against them, acceptance or prejudice towards aging , all sides are given an airing in the play. Personally, I really enjoy the debate dramatized on stage because while it kick-starts the conversation, it does allows us to form our own opinions.

It is a pity that the play seems a little short and it ends abruptly. The performance will have benefited from more time and further character development  before the climax is reached at the end.

The cast has good chemistry on stage. Lok Meng Chue as Maggie and Remesh Panicker as Raju is a beautiful pair. Both of them share many heartfelt moments on stage. Seong Hui Xuan as Maggie’s daughter Gwen provides a lovely presence on stage. Despite having few lines, her character conveys her emotions through her body and that is fascinating to watch.

“少数与多数之间的互换与碰撞”

Reviewer: Zekson Tan | 陈迦笙
Performance: 19 July 2016

虽然因应本地多元种族的环境而设置的集选区制度立意良善，可是往往有效的系统和体制都是把双刃刀。尤其其中对于“少数和多数族群”的二分法常引起人们的讨论。而《GRC》这部剧有趣的地方就在于把现实中“少数和多数”的族群做个对调，以轻松诙谐但不失严谨的表演让观众在看戏的时候除了去思考集选区制度的种种面貌，也同时重新审视一直以来对于“少数与多数”的直接定义和看法。

虽然《GRC》要探讨的课题看似严肃，但在故事情节上喜剧元素却占了绝大部分。这部剧恰到好处的拿捏了以本地和邻国政治时事为背景的笑料和讽刺。戏里引人发笑的梗像是对于领取少数族群证明过程的调侃、邻国政客的揶揄和风趣的马来语竞选短片等都是观众所熟悉的。虽然不多，但这部剧在严肃情节上的处理并没有敷衍带过。尤其在戏的后半部，以代表少数族裔的华人竞选者在群众大会的脱稿发言为导火线，让观众有机会一窥充斥着利益、无奈和妥协的政治角力和算计。而戏的结局更是带出了政治中“没有绝对的承诺”这一现实。

但就如同集选区制度一样，这样的情节和內容编排对于《GRC》想要引起观众对于“少数与多数族群”的思辨来说却也是把双刃刀。除了以幽默风趣为主调的呈现方式，《GRC》并不直接点出“少数与多数”间的碰撞和矛盾，而是借着呈现政治现实的局限性，希望观众能够主动的去反思平日里对于“少数和多数”那理所当然的定义。

但这样的氛围和说故事的方式却未必能夠在观众的心里留下足够且深刻的冲击，进而引起观众对于“少数和多数”的思考。当然并不是说单凭一部戏就希望观众能够对于这样的议题展开激烈的思考和探索。但是除了笑声和对政治现象的嘲讽，观众在离场后还能留有多少关于“少数与多数”的思考，就是见仁见智了。

然而就我而言，《GRC》除了让我带着欢笑之后的好心情离开剧场，也让我发觉就算处境对调，不管谁是少数谁是多数，问题还是会存在。所以即使在数据和现实上依然存在“多与少”的不同，但唯有不再以“少数与多数”来自我标签和区分，似乎才是成熟理性的多元种族社会该有的面貌。

“Hotel”

Reviewer: Dawn Teo
Performance: 14 & 15 July 2016

First staged in 2015, Hotel is a five-hour long epic that still manages to touch the audiences. Having caught the show last year and now at Lasalle’s SIA Theatre, I find myself going home with new perspectives of my identity and homeland.

Hotel captures the various narratives from Singapore as a colony till today, and even into the possible future. As chambermaids clear the room for the next guest to enter, a new story unfolds. The multiple stories reveal the perspectives of different individuals as we follow the journey of the room, nation and its people through time and history

With all the action centering on the same hotel room, the set is the constant – two walls and two doors to resemble an entrance, washroom exit as well as the layout of the room. The walls have multimedia projections to illustrate the movement of time periods – from patterned wallpaper to iconic events displayed through video.  It is simple and functional.  The scene changes are done quickly because of how well-practiced the chambermaids are. It is quite a delight to witness the room morphing in front of our eyes

But the stars of the show are the actors. An ensemble of 14 actors play characters of multiple ethnicities in different scenes of the play and at other times working the transitions. I enjoyed the use of different languages, accents that add to the authentic portrayal of these characters. Humour is used to underpin issues we as a nation wallpaper over. Propositions are declared but I am allowed to make up my own mind.

Hotel is one play that traverses time and space and is a piece of brilliant story-telling about ourselves and our home. Perhaps it challenges the common perception that we are too young a nation to have memories and histories to call our own.

“Sex, ageing and the courage to be happy”

Reviewer: Alisa Maya Ravindran
Performance: 22 July 2016

“If you are happy, then you are happy,” is the simple but powerful mantra of Helmi Yusof’s debut production, My Mother Buys Condoms. The romantic comedy challenges ideas about sex , ageing and interracial relationships with candour. The play gets off to a slower start as some of the actors’ jokes fall slightly flat. However, by the middle of the play, the chemistry between Maggie (Lok Meng Chue) and Raju (Remesh Panicker) consolidates and the comedic quirkiness of their situation develops. Panicker’s portrayal of a Malaysian air-con repairman who can only read Malay is commendable. He makes Raju believable and nuanced – a character with whom the audience can empathise.

Elnie S. Mashari plays Nora, a retired history teacher with a love for travel and Maggie’s best friend. Elnie delivers her lines with a good mixture of somberness and humour in her presentation of a character. Joshua Lim’s presentation of Wilfred, Maggie’s hyper-conservative son, who is mortified that his mother is having sex with Raju, borders on the hyperbolic. However, for the most part he is convincing in his portrayal of a confused and overly concerned son.

The play discusses issues of religion, sexuality and the rigidity of social expectations with frankness, making for some intense moments in the play. In the final analysis the play gestures towards the notion that Nora and Wilfred are slowly coming to terms with Maggie’s relationship with Raju. However, whether the two people who Maggie loves the most can truly accept that Maggie is a respectable and responsible person, even if they do not understand her choices, is left in the open. Wilfred’s pained expression in the final scene as he discusses with his sister Gwen (Seong Hui Xian), the recent whirlwind of events surrounding their mother, suggests that acceptance, while on its way, is still a long way from home.

“Double-Bill: Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain & Hawa”

Reviewer: Isaac Lim 
Performance: 2 July 2016

It may be easy to label these two plays as essentially Malay plays, centred on Malay and Islamic issues in Singapore. However, the two plays, presented as a double-bill, are much more than the race and religion they appear to represent.

Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain attempts to expose the ‘Mat Moto’ subculture to a wider audience. It strives to get people to understand the mentality of Malay motorcyclists on the road, and issues they face off the road. The play follows four best friends from the day they got their 2B riding licences, through multiple skids and accidents and hospital stays, until one major crash that ends with a fatality.

The scenes are all a tad under-developed, too short for the emotions of the characters to build up, and often snaps at an anti-climax. When the story fails to unravel itself through the dialogues, characters are then given awkward and unnecessary expository monologues. The actors were rather casual in their performance throughout. They occasionally lack the energy to project their voices, even in over-the-top scenes in which their characters are arguing with each other.

Perhaps, rather unfair in comparison, Hawa (which both refers to the Quranic Eve and the female gender) is a far more nuanced piece.

Hawa brings together alternative views on Islam as a religion, and female homosexuality. Siti (played by Koh Wan Ching) is a recent convert, and is faced with having to settle the funeral rites of her deceased partner. In the span of half a day, she struggles between fulfilling the duty of being the only next-of-kin and the demands of her new religion. Then come Ahmad (Saiful Amri), the funeral services director with a fabulous sense of dark humour, and Zaki (Al-Matin Yatim), a funeral gatecrasher of sorts. The three are embroiled in conversations about life, the after-life, religious obligations, and religion rights, in a convivial but non-diminutive manner.

The actors play the respective characters with conviction, making them believable and relatable. Koh, as Siti, manages to present her frustrations and worries without coming across as unreasonable. Yatim as the endearing Zaki who goes to strangers’ funerals to “provide comfort to (our) veiled sisters” is so wrong, but nonetheless charmingly portrayed.

Marketing the two shows as a double-bill calls for unnecessary comparisons. The three-hour run time of the two plays also tests the audiences’ patience. No matter how good the plays were, there was a slightly audible collective sigh of relief heard at the end of the evening.

“Double-Bill: Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain & Hawa”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 30 June 2016

In Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain (Riders), four impressive looking motorbikes line side by side upstage composing an Instagram-worthy set. It is a coming-of-age story about four friends, within the oft-misunderstood mat motor community in Singapore, whose lives are anything but picture perfect.

Riders opens with its four protagonists gathered around a void deck’s circular stone chairs and tables. A versatile setting chosen for its possible negative associations as a place where rowdy and rebellious youths hang out or smoke. The chairs niftily change into traffic barriers in the last scene.

Broken families, unstable financial incomes and a knack for everything but academics, forces them to juggle familial responsibilities, work and school simultaneously. This leaves them with their love for motorbikes and makes their passion for riding the only escape from life. Unfortunately, their love for motorbikes is a double edged sword, binding them as well as dividing them.

During the soliloquies, characters pour their hearts out and turn stereotypes about motorists on its head. No doubt such a direct mode of presentation is at once personal and forthright but it comes across as too simplistic for a professional cast. After all, “show not tell” is the modus operandi of theatre.

In Hawa, Siti (Koh Wan Ching), a Chinese who recently converted to Islam, is overwhelmed by the sudden responsibility to oversee the funeral arrangements for her Malay girlfriend. As she grapples to come to terms with her loss, the funeral director and a “gate crasher thief” reminds her to fulfil her religious and social obligations.

Koh is sincere and sensitive in her portrayal of Siti. Understandably crude and curt in her exchanges with the others, she succinctly delivers the complex emotions and struggles of a homosexual faced with rejection from family and religion.

Saiful Amri is charming and comical as a funeral director who lives by the mantra “business is business” and “a human only has dignity when he is alive.”

Al-Matin Yakim is able to hold his own as Zaki, the uninvited mourner. A conscientious and conservative portrayal saves that character from coming across as a sleazy and one-dimensional hijab-chasing deviant.

Hawa boldly interrogates the position and value of religion in today’s society where faith seems to be waning in the face of progress in science and where heterosexuality is no longer the only sexuality endorsed. Non-Muslim audiences are also treated to a rare opportunity to peek into the rituals behind an Islam funeral.

“Chasing our dreams…together?”

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 15 July 2016

Geng Rebut Cabinet (GRC), first staged in December 2015, is revived as part of the W!ld Rice Singapore Theatre Festival 2016. With the latest general election barely over in September 2015, both productions (just over six months apart) ride on raw memories and emotions associated that fateful event.

The premise of GRC is quite straightforward – playwright Alfian Sa’at imagines a world in which the percentages of ethnic Malays and Chinese in Singapore’s population are swapped, making ethnic Malays the overwhelming majority. Against this backdrop, the play traces the activities of five characters, members of the fictional Workers’ Action Party (WAP), as they campaign their way to eventual success during an upcoming general election.

The cast is strong overall, believable as political party candidates, each with their distinctive quirks. There is the experienced but slightly obnoxious minister with the bad jokes, the motherly grassroots leader, the superficial overseas scholar, the capable lawyer with a secret, and of course, the “token minority” candidate.

The effectiveness of the play, despite its overall simplicity, manifests in how uncomfortable it makes me feel within the first few minutes. As the party members have a meeting to plan their strategy for the election campaign, all of them instinctively communicate and banter in Malay, oblivious to the fact that new party member Catherine Seah is ethnic Chinese. It is only after awhile that a fellow new member, Maisarah Hamdan, reminds the rest that they may be being insensitive, prompting Catherine’s slightly apologetic reassurance to the group that she can understand them even though she may not be able to speak Malay well.

Such a scenario would conceivably be all too familiar to minority groups in real-world Singapore. Being part of the majority ethnic group, this forthright demonstration of taken-for-granted insensitivities, succeeds guilting me into reflection.

The play continues along these lines, throwing out every tacky racial stereotype of the Chinese you can think of, such as liking red and having a penchant for gambling, naturally frowned upon in the play’s Malay-Muslim-dominant world.

As is typical in Alfian’s work, the various sensitive issues mentioned in the play are nestled within an overarching cloak of humour. Much of the commentary is amusing in its familiarity to most Singaporeans, from jibes at how Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) make no geographical sense – complete with cheery Powerpoint demonstrations – to a deliberately cheesy music video showing the WAP candidates mingling with their constituents.

If there is one thing to gripe about, it would be the intrusiveness of the sound effects, which at times get in the way of the already effective script.

However, if anyone can make you laugh heartily and feel terrible at the same time, it is Alfian Sa’at. There are no easy solutions to the issues presented, so perhaps the best one can do is to recognise as much and laugh along.