“Awkward Assembly”

Reviewer: Isaac Tan
Performance: 14 July 2019

The biggest conundrum facing any director restaging a play that was written several decades ago is balancing between “making it relevant” and letting the piece speak for itself.

In dealing with Ovidia Yu’s Three Fat Virgins Unassembled, director Grace Kalaiselvi does a little bit of both. The result? A slightly awkward assembly.

Yu’s play is a blistering satire about how women are often placed in impossible situations, and judged by equally impossible standards in the various roles they play in society. It also reasserts a sense of self-worth by reclaiming the derogatory labels of “fat” and “virgin”, and declaring that women should be comfortable with being who they are.

Kalaiselvi’s interventions manifests in several ways. The first is to push the play to say more than it originally did. In his review, writer and critic Ng Yi-Sheng expressed mixed feelings about the suggestion of a possible suicide, which was not in the original script. This reviewer agrees with Ng that it is unwarranted, and it also feels like a strident push to amplify the pitifulness of an unfulfilled wife and mother.

Furthermore, the pace of the show is slightly slower than what is demanded by the script. With three actors role-playing different sorts of “fat virgins” and a fourth doubling as a commentator or “the man” in various situations, we are supposed to see an accelerating parade of silliness, which highlights the ridiculous standards being imposed on women. Yet the gentle pace of this staging does little to emphasise these caricatured vignettes, thus dulling the play’s bite.

Yet another one of Kalaiselvi’s directorial decisions is to update the play’s references. The clearest example is to change Agony Aunt columns in magazines (which offer nonsensical advice to teenage girls) to that of forums on Reddit and Quora. It is interesting to note that due to the fleeting nature of modern technology, the substitution does not seem to hold as much cultural sway as magazine advice columns did in the 1990s.

That said, the performance is buoyed by a sense of playfulness in the cast (Chanel Chan, Munah Bagharib, Zelda Tatiana Ng, and Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai) as they don and doff their various characters with ease. Their sense of derring-do as they play certain stereotypes to the hilt also adds to the overall enjoyment of the show.

It is always a boon to restage older local plays due to our shallow cultural memory, but it requires a really deft hand to maintain a classic’s integrity while ensuring that it is still impactful on the modern audience.

“Love can be enough”

Reviewer: Myle Yan Tay
Performance: 3 November 2018

TheatreWorks wraps up its “Because I Love You” season with The Reunification of the Two Koreas, a collection of stories reflecting on love. The team takes on an ambitious task, with nine actors playing over 50 characters and presenting 20 narratives. The production does this successfully, creating an engaging and emotional journey filled with heartfelt, comic, and devastating moments.

Jacques Vincey, the show’s director, melds the different elements of theatre to create a seamless and immersive experience. Every member of the cast is electric, bringing new energies and life to the characters. Timothy Nga and Janice Koh deserve special mentions for their ability to fully embody the complex language of the play.

Marie-Christine Soma’s lighting is subtle and precise, suggesting new worlds with small changes in the lighting state. Each costume by Afton Chen is unique and evokes a different sense of time and space. Bani Haykal’s stand-out sound design deftly shifts between eerie and comforting, soothing and tense, and sometimes all at once. And the moments of comedy are put to their fullest effect, and laughs are often followed by a chilling hush across the audience.

Joël Pommerat’s script, translated from French to English by Marc Goldberg, places the audience in a new auditory landscape. It is clear from the start that the language of the play is going to be slightly off from our reality. This is what makes The Reunification of Two Koreas such an absorbing theatrical experience. It evokes miniature worlds with every scene, all unified within the same linguistic universe. Each world gives the suggestion of a larger story, of which we only get snippets, just a taste of what it has to offer. There are brief pauses to consider what brought the characters to each scene and where they went after. But then the next scene starts, with a new imaginative premise.

Even when treading on familiar territory such as the wife with Alzheimer’s or the adulterous husband, the distinct language and clarity of direction makes stories feel new. The only times this reviewer feels the play is not pushing as hard are the two scenes involving sex workers. These are still caught in a male fantasy, without the same deconstructive eye applied to the other relationships within the play.

There is a formal break near the end of the piece, through a multimedia segment. It is a jarring moment that interrupts the production, and its meaning is never made fully clear. But it is provocative and unsettling, and something this reviewer will continue to reflect on long after the show’s run ends.

The Reunification of Two Koreas dismantles what we think about love. But it is ultimately not cynical, and instead channels its deconstruction of love into a rejuvenating and emotional experience.

“Where is the love?”

Reviewer: Christian W. Huber
Performance: 26 July 2018

TheatreWorks’ Writers Laboratory has been a long-time incubation programme aimed at nurturing and encouraging local writing. As part of this effort, TheatreWorks opens its new “Because I Love You” season with an original work from the lab. However, it could have done with further tightening and simplification before its rather polished treatment on stage.

13.13.13, written by Shen Tan, explores the institution of marriage in this day and age between two couples. The first is a traditional one between a man and a woman who are happy to live without the legality of a marriage contract, (along with a specific clause of having no children so they can enjoy their lives together). The second is a non-traditional one between two female professionals that yearn for the day that their union can be recognized legally and socially.

Tan’s piece raises many the question of the validity of marriage in today’s context. It is provocative, though some editing will help in this long 95-minute piece that drags its way to its denouement.

Sometimes, polishing the production too much has its disadvantages. And it feels this way with this piece, where this reviewer feels that a simpler more naturalistic staging can be more effective.

The use of different types of staging devices, such as multi-media (which assists the audience in visualizing some of the back stories of the characters but is not completely necessary), sometimes feel included just for the sake of it being “visually engaging”.  The set is interesting in its use of white elastic cables on the stage which defines different rooms in an apartment which can be manipulated by the performers to show how space affects their lives.  These moments are interesting visually, but extremely obstructive and irritating to the viewer trying to catch what happens on stage. The weakness in this production is the complete unnecessity of microphoning the performers in a black box space (which defeats the purpose of allowing them to use their voices naturally to carry the story effectively). The mic-ing makes this reviewer struggle to engage with the piece.

This misguided direction by Tan Shou Chen – as his first outing on a mainstage production in Singapore – has some good ensemble moments though. The cast and their chemistry does find some truth in some of the larger moments of truth in the ‘less means more’ staging (e.g. Thomas Pang’s monologue towards the end of the play with his friend’s spirit overseeing him as he speaks), though this was far and few between.

Perhaps with more subtlety and less devices to wow the overall experience of this piece, the performers would rely on a more honest way to ‘find the love’, as would also the audience.

“The Good Farmer“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 15 March 2018

This staging of Christopher Chee’s The Good Farmer – the winning script from TheatreWorks’ annual 24-Hour Playwriting Competition – is part of TheatreWorks’ Writing & Community programme. This programme seeks to develop writers from within the community, and to bring their work back to the community to inspire discussion about social issues – undoubtedly worthy goals. Unfortunately, while this performance does fulfil them to a basic extent, I cannot help feeling like I am watching a secondary school performance, and thinking that the community deserves better.

The stilted and awkward language betrays the rawness of the work from the get go. The Good Farmer begins with a naughty joke, which would have been an interesting way to open a play had it not carried on for several lines too long. Language aside, I am also befuddled by several implausible plot developments, for instance the complete disappearance overseas of Joseph Teo, a Public Service Commission scholar who has decided to break his bond. Even granting the possibility of him successfully evading the contact of family and friends, it is hard to believe that the state could not have tracked him down within a few days.

Given the title, references to farming seem rather arbitrary. Besides several direct mentions of the biblical story of Cain and Abel in the dialogue, and the decisions of the brothers Joseph and later Jacob, as well as their father, to go into (literal) farming, I am not sure how the idea of farming is being treated in a meaningful or nuanced way.

It makes me wonder to what extent opportunities were given for it to be revised and tested before this public showing.

Perhaps most curious is the decision to stage a segment near the end, where the two actors address the audience as narrators rather than characters. This is done in a style that is reminiscent of Chinese opera, complete with stylised movements and sound effects. This comes across as extremely disjunctive, as it is the only time such a break occurs in a play that is otherwise staged very realistically.

This realistic staging itself is an aspect I question, given the obvious limitations of the venue – the Mountbatten Community Club Performance Centre – which is not a professional theatre venue. This results in scene and lighting transitions that appear awkwardly amateur, for example having a stagehand walk on and offstage multiple times to change the props, contributing to the “secondary school play” vibe.

This is not to dismiss the worth of the project itself. The efforts of a professional theatre company to seek out new writers, stage performances in less typical venues, and reach more varied audiences, are certainly positive steps. However, moving forward, it would be more encouraging to see steps taken towards ensuring that these audiences are able to experience performances of a quality no different from what would be expected of any professional theatre performance.

“Off Kilter”

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 14 October 2017

Prior to this full-staging, Rameseh Meyyappan’s Off Kilter was shown at TheatreWorks in May 2017 as a work-in-progress. After a staging at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow also in May, it makes its return to Singapore.

A trained mime artist, Meyyappan’s (who is also hearing-impaired) strength lies unquestionably in the arresting quality of his movements. In Off Kilter, this is apparent from near the start of the solo performance, when even a movement as small as his fingers “walking” across a table is so precise that I feel I can sit and watch that movement for a good fifteen or twenty minutes.

Regrettably, it is around that time into the performance that things start to peter off. Dramaturgically, Off Kilter can be tighter and may benefit from a more varied emotional journey.

The incessant, monotonous ticking sound effects, repetitive actions, and bizarre occurrences do conjure up the emotional state of someone suffering from mental illness; effective even to the point of evoking in me a sense of intense frustration. However, the emotional trajectory remains about the same throughout, making it difficult for an audience to sustain interest for the whole 60-minute performance.  

Meyyappan’s previous works, such as Butterfly and Snails and Ketchup, made use of staging elements that were inherently very dramatic (puppetry and aerial choreography respectively). In Off Kilter, he has chosen to incorporate the element of illusion instead. Unfortunately, this choice proves to be underwhelming – the first time it happens there is a moment of novelty, but beyond that it starts to feel gimmicky.

Additionally, while it is apparent that much research on mental health and mental illness has gone into this work, I have reservations about how this research has been incorporated. The character indulges in obsessive cleaning and has a concern with arranging things, traits commonly associated with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but these are shown mostly in the earlier half of the performance. Then the character also experiences symptoms of depression (fatigue, trouble concentrating or making decisions) and schizophrenia (experiencing hallucinations). Selecting the most recognisable traits of each disorder and including them without a clearer overarching link makes the treatment of mental illness come across as tokenistic.

This is not to say that this work is not a relevant one; on the contrary, it is highly relevant, especially in Singapore where discussing mental illness, an issue fraught with misconceptions, is still seen as taboo for many people. Very aptly, Off Kilter is presented right after World Mental Health Day (on 10 October). If anything, Meyyappan has forced open a window into the dark world in which sufferers of mental illness live on a daily basis, and this is surely a valuable start.

“Mixed Feelings“

Reviewer: Isaac Tan
Performance: 2 March 2017

Chosen from TheatreWorks’ 24-Hour Playwriting Competition 2016 to be developed into a proper show, Mixed bears the hallmarks of a script that is written under pressure, and in a short span of time.

The scenes in this show – about the pressures and stigma faced by mixed couples and their children – progresses too fast to allow the audience sufficient time to process what is happening.

The male actors (Gabriele Goh and Joel Low) are hampered by the quick march of the script, too. To make matters worse, their lines do not have much for them to settle into their characters before the next scene comes along, which result in sketchy characterisations and  cursory performances. That said, playwright Raemae Kok did leave a couple of clues – such as Lee (Gabriele Goh) having an alcoholic father, and Mr Lim (Joel Low) being an eldest son in a traditional Chinese family – which the actors could have used to deepen their characterisation, but don’t.

In contrast, the women have more emotional lines to tap into, which consequently leaves a slightly deeper impact on the audience. Grace Kalaiselvi plays Cassandra, Lee’s wife, who worries about her parents not accepting her Chinese husband. Sneha Sudha Sanjay plays Nina, the rebellious student of mixed parentage. Sherilyn Tan plays Anika Lee, daughter of Cassandra and Lee, and a teacher-in-training who falls in love with her colleague while trying to help Nina.

Even with meatier lines, they are also affected by the rapid scenes with Sanjay getting the shortest end of the stick. She has the unenviable position of containing Nina’s emotional turmoil, without the opportunity of showing her wounds until the end of the show. Thus, Nina largely comes across as a brooding and angsty teenager.

Despite these flaws, Raemae Kok must be commended for sensitively channelling a personal struggle into a creative output for the stage. Her finest touch is manifested in her choice of having Nina as a foil to the battle-weary Anika. Both characters reach out to one another, in their own ways, but miss the much needed connection by a hair’s breadth. Director Tan Shou Chen wonderfully realises this by having Nina solemnly sit on a chair as Anika painfully looks on. The latter then delivers her monologue to express the hurt she bore, and the words that Nina could not find to say.

Perhaps the most painful aspect of the show is that we have heard the message before – several playwrights have tackled various issues of race, and the harm that our strict categories inflict on certain groups of people. The fact that, in 2016, a 17-year-old still feels the need to address similar problems shows how little our conversation on race has progressed.