“Man and woman, in translation”

Reviewer: Idelle Yee
Performance: 23 February 2019

Two desks are placed on either end of the stage; a man and a woman sit in front of each desk, writing, thinking, pondering. An odd assemblage of various household items sits centrestage: wooden racks, some table lamps, and various artefacts of domesticity: a night light, a scarf, and assorted items of clothing.

Then both man and woman drag their chairs downstage, and sit down once more, this time in a posture of address to the audience. The sounds of bossa nova-esque guitar fill the theatre. The play begins.

First premiered in 1988 in America, A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters employs the epistolary form to explore the relationship between a man and a woman through a lifetime of correspondence. It leads us through the childhood banter, the early awakenings of attraction, the gradual distancing of adulthood, and the slow burn into a desperate, adulterous affair.

In this translated production, staged at the Esplanade’s 2019 Huayi Festival, the exploration of what is said – or rather, written – and unsaid between man and woman is filtered through the linguistic pulsations of Mandarin (with smatterings of English). At the same time, it retains the original characters’ participation in specifically American customs such as dance classes and school proms. This duality results in an interestingly nuanced positionality, with respect to both Gurney’s play and to this production’s largely Singaporean-Chinese audience. It can perhaps be read as a Chinese-American immigrant take on the tale, but Singaporean actors and real-life married couple Nelson Chia and Mia Chee speak with an unmistakably Singaporean accent.

This Mandarin adaptation results in some thoroughly enjoyable moments of shared lightheartedness, particularly in the characters’ more youthful exchanges. Of special note is the moment when Chia’s Zhang Xin Nan (based off the original play’s Andrew Makepeace Ladd III), suddenly shouts “Sex!” in English, invoking a titter of childish glee amongst the audience. Parts of the translated dialogue recall 相生 (xiangsheng) performances in the delivery of rapid-fire banter; the two actors’ chemistry is an illumination as they interrupt, cut each other off, and coax out replies from the displeased or otherwise unenthused addressee.

Ultimately, though, the staging of an Anglophone play in a non-Anglophone language could perhaps afford to further explore immigrant narratives or diaspora culture. This translated production, which remains faithful to the original text, does not attempt to do so; this is a loss. Nonetheless, it still conveys the script’s emotional potency through the intimacy of what might be, to many, still the language of the heart.

“The chicken’s still dancing“

Reviewer: Edward Eng
Performance: 19 February 2019

You’re going to die. Every one of your friends will die. So will your crush. So will the strange man from the office across yours who give you a pat on the back sometimes.

I would be lying if I said Sarah Kane’s work doesn’t move me. Playwright Simon Stephens once said at a talk I attended that this is because Kane’s abjection emphasises her humanity, particularly in Cleansed and Crave where the tenderness between nuclear fallout and ultraviolence is quite distinct.

Her play 4.48 Psychosis, on the other hand, is a different emotional creature. It is Kane’s suicide note. Which makes adaptation odd: is it not exploitative? Why would anyone stage a suicide note?

Artist Liu Xiaoyi mostly overcomes these issues by personally reclaiming the narrative and structure. In FOUR FOUR EIGHT, he overlays the abstraction of Kane’s script on the grounded humanity of his own life. Since Liu is physically present in the production, FOUR FOUR EIGHT feels less suicidal and more existential.

It starts with Liu’s playful emails to his audience: one talks about his childhood while another snapshots a prosaic lift landing in a Workers’ Party-held constituency.

The performance itself is a sort of ‘choose your own (emotional) adventure’ through Esplanade that extends this existential-playfulness. We go to the rooftop, the waterfront, the Exciseman Bar (where Liu has set up camp), and a secret corridor that he enjoys. A little notebook is provided as a guide. It splices Kane’s original text and contains exercises inspired by it.

The places we go to feel like a jigsaw puzzle of one’s life. I am surprisingly touched by the secret corridor: I draw it as a softly-lit oasis. The sounds of the nearby escalator and plant room feel like an iron lung near the sea.

But the private room where Liu resides is strange: we get a drink from the bar and sit down to watch Liu and his belongings. The sudden jump here after pensively walking through public spaces makes this room seem almost pornographic. This is partly because the $58 ticket price, the exquisitely-bound notebook and the bar setting commodify the performance. The glass of nice whisky feels extraneous, as though it is an attempt to justify the performance, rather than the other way round. It is among the various ‘package-products’ of the performance that seem too disparate to honestly express Liu’s existentialism.

Watching Liu, I come to see how this honesty is important, because there are affecting moments in the room. Liu holds a stranger’s shoulder. Another audience member cries and he does too. One of the exercises is to mail a letter to a person of your choice, on the premise that today is the last day of your life.

4.48 Psychosis is most affecting when it is allowed to hold an audience in its spell. The author’s last moments yearning for human connection are heartbreaking. Liu captures these moments well, but if he can better limit the distractions, FOUR FOUR EIGHT has the potential for magic.

“A Roundabout Hypothesis”

Reviewer: Jevon Chandra
Performance: 1 March 2018

Einstein in the Carpark is proudly experimental. Part performance, sculpture, and mash of instructional exercises, the show takes place in Esplanade’s B2-level carpark. Curious objects, timed events, and interactive elements are scattered throughout the expanse of the work – they serve as both invitations and challenges to the audience.

Unfortunately, these provocations are neither engaging nor focused. Copulating with too many ideas, the show feels conceptually promiscuous.

It wants to have fun, but is unwilling to follow through.

Every work (even the free-form ones) is informed by a basic set of assumptions. However, the core assertions here seem superficial. For example, a central premise: that the carpark is a “liminal space”, a place of “transition.”

How so?

To me, the carpark, as suggested by the very word “park” in its name, is a space of rest. It is its own kind of destination, where moving bodies become still.

Under the theory of classical relativity, “absolute rest” does not exist. Objects are never so much as rest as merely perceived to be at rest. A car may “stop”, but once we move away, it too moves away from us.

But the endless gesturing towards relativity – of identity, culture, perception – becomes a crutch. There is a sense that I am being intellectually hoodwinked.  The show’s arguments also feel glib. A work can present multiple perspectives, as in a Cubist painting. However, an internal logic, abiding to a conceptual through-line is still required to tie the work together.

Relativity does not substitute the need for internal coherence.

Despite the show’s claims to present multiplicities, the actors’ personas – one embodies western musical theatre and the other eastern Kun opera – are flattened. Post-dramatic theatre, from which the production draws influences, seeks to free actors from being “text-bearers”, so as to depict action and places. Antithetically, the actors in the show are saddled with a different burden: that of being culture-bearers. Meanwhile, audience members are barraged with safety instructions and actively shepherded by on-site staff. All these parameters may be necessary, but I wish they too can be enfolded into the show more critically and thoughtfully.

Thankfully, when the show is truly bold, it is also eloquent. One sequence has a character driving around the carpark, prompting the safety crew to keep everyone off the road. For a while, I became more attuned to my body’s physical properties, my mass and velocity relative to the moving car. In another moment, sound designer Darren Ng tapped onto the acoustic properties of the space. A cacophonous rumble resonated throughout the carpark, as if space-time has been made audible.

Nevertheless, such points of coherence are few, and too far in between. They captivate, but do not manage to clarify.

By the end of the performance, I remain unsure: if this show is an experiment, what is it testing for?

“The Nightmare of Changing and Conforming“

Reviewer: Isaac Tan
Performance: 1 March 2018

How does one stage a work inspired by Franz Kafka? Rather than a straight-laced adaptation of the writer’s literary works or life story, artistic directors Nelson Chia (Nine Years Theatre) and Kuik Swee Boon (T.H.E Dance Company) instead focused on immersing the audience in the Kafkaesque – a nightmarish quality that has a sense of a lingering oppression and the illogical.

With the help of writer-researcher Neo Hai Bin, a selection of Kafka’s short stories, diary entries, and letters are carefully curated to be presented in Cut Kafka!, while Chinese folktales and original scenes are infused to add a unique stamp to the Kafkaesque.

The innovativeness of this collaboration – a first for both companies – is seen from the get-go. The performers sprawl on the floor, trying to morph into something different so that they are free to go to work. Despite inverting Kafka’s Metamorphosis, it remains true to the spirit of his stories. It also sets the theme for the rest of the show: the nightmare of changing and conforming.

Later on, the performers tries to save a cat in the heavy rain, and the authorities are of no help. This brings to mind Kuo Pao Kun’s Mama Looking for Her Cat, in which the cat represents something intangible that is lost; and The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole – a critique of bureaucracy. The absurdity of Coffin is also apparent when the performers have to stop the rain or shrink the cat in order to save it.

Performance-wise, the directors clearly played to the strengths of their performers (Nine Years Theatre: Mia Chee, Hang Qian Chou, Neo Hai Bin, Jean Toh, and Timothy Wan; T.H.E: Anthea Seah, Brandon Khoo, Billy Keohavong, Lynette Lim, Ng Zu You). This is best demonstrated in a scene where the actors play the Monkey King, while the dancers complement them by physically embodying the lines being delivered.

Impressively, the ensemble has such strong synergy that one stops differentiating the actor from the dancer after a while. This is evident when the performers are clambering on the giant chair as Kafka’s letter to his father is recited. The inter-disciplinary exchange between both companies have clearly paid off.

Similarly, the design elements are meticulous. Adrian Tan and Pek Limin (lighting and spatial designers) had a red scaffolding built on top of the lighting rig, which resembles an insect’s legs. Various lights are hung on the “legs”, allowing the possibilities of carving or partially revealing the space with light. As the performers enter or exit the space from four corners of the room, the performance has a sense of infestation.

Thankfully, Cut Kafka! does not veer into excesses of existential lament, but leaves us in limbo. We have to grapple with the equally unsavoury prospects of changing and conforming in a society quick to erase memories for the sake of “progress”, and equally quick to nudge deviants back in line.

Like the beetles, we have to change to conform to a certain societal logic. What that is or how do we go about it, no one quite knows.

“I came at last to the seas“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 23 February 2018

Developed over a period of more than a year, this ambitious production comprises performers and creative personnel from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. Coordinating multiple collaborators across different countries is obviously no mean feat, and one I certainly respect. Such a team also fittingly mirrors the central theme of I came at last to the seas: a reflection on the Chinese diaspora.

Seas is inspired by the “six roots of sensations” in Buddhist philosophy, which is more evident in the Chinese title, 《六根不宁》. The general meditative mood  of the piece is created by lighting and sound design, which is particularly apparent during the transition between scenes. The transitions themselves are skilfully and beautifully executed by the cast and stage managers, who are performers in their own right as they gracefully convey platform pieces around the stage in flowing choreographed sequences.

However, despite the intriguing premise of the work and the mesmerising movements, the piece feels incomplete in terms of overall coherence. It attempts to explore the notion of the Chinese diaspora through seven seemingly unconnected characters, each with their own quirks. Questions about where, or what, home is; the significance of “Chinese-ness” in a multi-cultural context; and the meaning or value of family and identity in a technological age, are asked. But these ideas end up being presented in a slightly didactic manner, and we are often told what to reflect, rather than encouraged to freely reflect.

I am also disoriented by two segments that punctuate the work – a culinary game show and a singing variety show. Unlike the rest of the piece, these scenes are performed in a distinctively self-reflexive, over-the-top manner, with the obligatory obnoxious host played to comedic effect by Rosa Maria Velasco.

The culinary segment does elaborate on some points about Chinese diasporic culture and identity, such as the view that the Chinese culture is diluted when mixed with elements of the host culture. In the other segment, Singaporean singer Joanna Dong performs a medley of Chinese songs, some of which have origins in other languages. Although I do not doubt Dong’s vocal abilities, and the scene is intrinsically entertaining, it nevertheless comes across as a gratuitous display.

Structurally, I appreciate that punctuations in the meditation may be necessary to avoid the work becoming too heavy or slow-moving, but the two scenes do come across as being disjunctive and jarring in the context of the piece.

With further development, Seas could be an extremely beautiful, moving work. The talent of the cast and creative/production team members is evident in the individual elements. But just as individuals in the widely-spread Chinese diaspora search for a common meaning and identity, so the challenge for the Seas team is to seek a thread that would weave the work into a more coherent whole.

“Nobody will write a review for you.”

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 3 February 2017

Less than 15 minutes into Yeo Yann Yann’s performance, I am sold. Such impeccable dexterity as an actor can only come with substantial experience, and, as Yeo reminds us during the play, she has more than 20 years of it.

The title, Actor, Forty, is a play on the Mandarin title of Summer Snow, a 1995 Hong Kong movie directed by Ann Hui (女人四十, directly translated as Woman, Forty). Yeo’s character in this performance is an actor who has been cast as the protagonist of that movie.

Playwright Haresh Sharma’s characteristic wit is detectable throughout the play. The play was written in English and then translated into not just Mandarin, but also multiple other languages and dialects including Cantonese, Hokkien and Malay. Yeo slips in and out of these languages (also different accents within the same language)  with finesse, conjuring effectively the myriad cultural contexts in which her character lives and works. This reflects not only her indubitable talent, but also exemplifies what happens when a team of collaborators – playwright, translator, dramaturg, actor – get it right.

Yeo’s character learns about her pregnancy while in the midst of filming for Summer Snow.  She is also 40 years old – a fact that is naturally cause for some concern. While the subject itself is not new and with many clichés looming, Haresh has managed to write a play that poignantly captures the nuances of the character’s predicament without being trite. One of my favourite lines, roughly translated, is “you can’t win awards for being a mother; nobody will write a review for you”.  This rings true for mothers in general while adding a bittersweet tinge for someone who happens to be an actor with multiple awards to her name.

I embody the same irony as I realise that I will soon be writing a review for this very performance.

The only part of the work about which I have doubts is the inclusion of the two stage assistants, who are visible on stage throughout most of the performance. They not only assist with costume changes, but also function as other (non-speaking) characters with whom Yeo interacts, and occasionally provide background vocal input. Their role seems rather substantial, and for this reason I hesitate to call the play a monologue in a strict sense, and while I can understand the decision to have them put on neutral facial expressions, it unfortunately appears contrived and awkward.

Nevertheless, this is a small gripe in the overall scheme of things. The many references to other works – films, television programmes and theatre productions from the ’80s and ’90s in Singapore and Malaysia – open up the play to a wider cultural and historical contextualisation beyond being just a personal story.