“Chained and Connected”

Reviewer: Beverly Yuen
Performance: 30 April 2016

Dark Room, a docudrama written and directed by Edith Podesta, shares the true stories of former inmates of Changi Prison. They are based on recorded interviews which lasted an average of two hours each. The first incarnation of the play was entitled Dark Room x8 and staged as a work-in-progress in 2014.

The set, designed by Chris Chua, is symmetrical in most of its configurations. It is unbearably sharp and geometrical with its lines, edges, pointedness and rectangularity. Coupled with the harsh lighting design by Adrian Tan – which casts lines, angular shapes, and shadows – the stage is transformed into an enclosed space of castigation, control, and confinement.

The internment experienced by the prisoners is also enhanced by Darren Ng’s sound effects of metal prison doors opening and shutting, and the metallic sounds of bars and chains. However, at some points, the sound is so abrupt that it interrupts the performers delivering their texts.

Prison life is depicted as boredom, loss and fear.  The inmates play games, share meals and singing sessions to relieve the tedium. Their lives in the prison are “chained and connected to one another.” They are visited by their parents, represented by a middle-aged couple played by Lim Kay Siu and Neo Swee Lin.

Amongst the cohesive ensemble of 11, Oliver Chong and Pavan J Singh constantly engage the audience with their adroit performances. They deliver their characters convincingly with a pertinent grasp of rhythm in their actions and speech, tinted with a sense of wretchedness and dark humour.

The other six male prisoners add diversity to the spectrum of personalities.  Nelson Chia and Noor Effendy Ibrahim play the long-term inmates who orientate and give advice to the newbies; Timothy Nga plays the gay inmate who is placed in the same cell as the other straight men; Ian Tan plays a discouraged ex-convict who struggles with issues of acceptance in the society; Mohd Fared Jainal plays the melancholic inmate; and Erwin Shah Ismail plays the inmate who sheds light on the life in prison with his composed, and occasionally perceptive account.

Shafiqhah Efandi, who plays the only female prisoner in the piece, sustains her acting with a poignant inner soul-scape. She delivers her final soliloquy compellingly, with each word piercing right into the heart of the viewers.

The script is a sincere and intelligent piece of writing, especially with its use of humour amidst the intense treatment of the subject. However, the overly-dense text of the play – which clocks at 2 hours and 15 minutes – falls flat at some moments during the second half of the show. By this time, there is hardly any display of the intention and subtext behind the lines. However, this is a well-researched, earnest, and humanity-championing piece of work that should be seen by more people.

“Struggling with the Outside from the Inside”

Reviewer: Alisa Maya Ravindran
Performance: 30 April 2016

Dark Room opens and ends with monologues that are inspired by true accounts from prisoners, immersing the audience in the experiences of the characters and their loved ones from the get-go. The play walks you through the experiences of convicts from their court date until their release date, and comprehensively addresses the ups and downs as it develops.

The star-studded cast, with the likes of Lim Kay Siu and Noor Effendy Ibrahim, does not disappoint. The actors interject comedy and grief and introspection throughout, so the lengthy run time of two hours is not difficult to sit through. What is most powerful about this performance is the diversity of characters, in terms of ethnicity socio-economic class. A Malay uncle in his forties, young, well-educated gay men, a Chinese waiter and a foreign worker all share the same cell.

The cast’s use of space is praise-worthy, as the male characters work within a mock-up of a Changi prison cell for the bulk of the show. Besides showcasing the daily routines of prison life and how the characters cope with their new circumstances, Dark Room also benefits from the perspectives of parents and loved ones, and shows how a prison sentence punishes the jailed person’s family as well. In essence, this is the central struggle all of the characters face: the idea that life in a jail cell is about figuring out one’s past, present and future while all the while being conscious of, but out of touch with the outside world.

Nelson Chia’s Chinese monologue about caning in the prisons has the audience in total silence. His character’s empathy with the prisoners who are caned is equal parts moving and disturbing. In his speech, the humanity of each prisoner is brought to the forefront, as he strips away labels of crime, shame to highlight the universal experiences of pain and humiliation. Shafiqhah Efandi is the only female inmate in the play, and single-handedly conveys women’s experiences of prison. While her performance is compelling in terms of its somberness, it is ultimately one-dimensional in that the upsides of prison life, no matter how minute, are barely discussed.

In the final analysis, the identities of the prisoners and the crimes for which they are incarcerated are never revealed. Instead the play focuses on how “normal” these archetypical prisoners are and raises a long-debated question: just how effective and ethical is the current prisons system?

“Dreams, and what to do?”

Reviewer: Kei Franklin
Performance: 31 March 2016

I had a dream last night. I was in an aquarium in London with my husband who was actually my mother. We went to the library and a Spider Queen stole our pretzels. They might have been pretzels, or popiah – I couldn’t tell. My husband began ‘caw-cawing’ like a crow and put some items into a bag as if I were leaving him forever: a cucumber, a lamp, Oreos, an oboe, and a plucked chicken. That’s when I started to feel a tingling sensation. It was the Spider Queen crawling into my left ear.

… Are you with me?

Intrusions is a literal exploration of Jean and Jovian’s dreams. Two women, adjacent worlds, unaware of each other.

Are they two different people? Or one and the same?

Simultaneous dreams of a single person? The dreams of sisters sleeping side by side?

Wild objects populate the stage – dolls, puppets, a fish tank, a stack of concrete bricks, a drill – the space is a delicious-looking toy. The performers command the space, contort, sing, speak, and morph into all types of creatures and characters.

I find myself grasping for meaning, wondering whether there is a larger significance or purpose for performing these dreams in front of a live audience.

Is it simply a sharing? An opportunity to practice radical imagination?

Or simply a reminder to focus on singular moments and detail amidst the bizarre chaos or life?

Intrusions certainly has moments – fleeting and visually impactful tableaus that linger in my mind’s eye: Jovian parts her long black hair and wraps it through her toes, a chicken is beheaded, a red phone on a ladder rings.  I think about Dadaism, the Absurdist art movement, and Lewis Carroll.

There is an imposing rape scene – powerful, dominating, dark, inimitable – but it is dropped and we move on to parachutes and other dreams. I wonder without certainty if sex is central to Intrusions.

Do we have control in dreams? Are we performing in our dreams more or less than in real life? Do our dreams tell us about our souls? Or are we simply talking about REM?

I leave Intrusions with questions – sleepy, and hoping to wake with clarity.

“不是痴人说梦”

Reviewer: Neo Hai Bin | 梁海彬
Performance: 2 April 2016

两个像梦一样的女人在台上躺着。

所有关于女人的，平时不露于台面的压抑、记忆、情欲、幻想，一览无遗地表露在舞台。

例如Jovian袒露了上身，看似摆脱了胸罩的束缚，接下来却套上了不同的女装，并努力地扮演衣服赋予的各种女性角色。还有她赤裸上身，仅仅玩弄不同的发型，就塑造出了千姿百态的女性面貌，让我们醒悟：我们仅仅只熟悉女性的“形象”，我们对女人竟然永远只是以貌取人。

她最后把头发系在椅子上，把整张大椅子举了起来。长长的柔发，力量的显示。女性要摆脱意识形态，还必须以“力量”来显示—— 愈加揭露了父权社会之根深蒂固。深植在我们的心里的价值观，才更叫人不寒而栗。

例如Jean玩弄着一个个塑像，和它们并排站在一起；时而对它们好，时而很粗暴，像小女生对待心爱的洋娃娃。女人在父权社会往往沦为玩物，剧（梦）中表露无遗。她于是只能穿越舞台，一边搜集物品，一边诉说一个个荒唐又令人惆怅的梦，梦成了她试图摆脱/超脱的途径。Jean感动了坐在最后一排的我。

两个女人荒谬的行为、令人措手不及的情节…… 此时观众已不在乎真假梦幻。虚与实互相折射出了观众的世界，女人借由梦境道出现实父权社会的荒唐可耻。

然而这又不只是女人的故事，也让人联想到我们对客工、异族同胞、单亲妈妈、同性恋者、独居老人…… 到底也抱持着什么样的意识形态？我们有没有想过，当我们无意识地抱持着这种种的意识形态，会为对方造成多大的伤害？

“INTRUSIONS”的普世性，可见于此。

“Finding Spaces Between Memories”

Reviewer: Dawn Teo
Performance: 27 March 2016

The performance is housed in a simple set of trapezium wooden frames that grow in width to invite the audiences’ seating area within its staged compounds. It embraces the audience as it implicates him/her. I feel like I am part and parcel of the creation of this work just by being present, and that is a lovely feeling to have before as well as after the performance.

The two actors acknowledge the audience and speak directly to them – complete with conversational gestures and eye contact. After initial awkwardness in both presentation and reception, everyone eases into the casual atmosphere eventually. The bond created through set and actors endures and endears throughout the performance.

Recalling Mother is a new iteration of a work-in-progress for theatre makers Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed.  This 2016 version is its fourth staging. Discovering and rediscovering memories, the duo explore their ever-evolving relationships with their own mothers.

Wong and Mohamed transform themselves as fluidly as memories do. One moment they are their present selves chatting with each other, in the next, they are children watching their mothers cook once more. However, the seamless transitions are most magical when both women alter their physical shape one limb at a time to assume their mothers’ appearance. Watching the detailed transformations right in front of my eyes is a beautiful sight and brings the performance home to me, literally

Recalling Mother is genuine and poignant story-telling. Despite the use of Cantonese and Malay without subtitles, the tone of voice and context given in minimal English at each time are enough to paint the complete picture for the audience.

I left the theatre studio deep in thought while being overwhelmed with emotions. I reflect on my own relationship with my own mother: pondering on what this performance has brought and will bring to our relationship.

“The Mother We Share”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 25 March 2016

Checkpoint Theatre’s latest production, Recalling Mother, is, as its title suggests, an exercise in constructing autobiographies. Much like a home cooked meal, it is written, performed simply and sincerely by Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed. There is no fourth wall, no hagiography, just simple and powerful storytelling – the very atom of theatre making – at its core. And what tender and touching stories we hear!

The two leads walk us through their childhood, the gradual aging of their mothers and the performance history of the piece (this is its fourth staging). They slip into their characters effortlessly, modulating their tones, speaking solely in their mother tongue and altering their physical gait, right down to the sallow droop of a weather-beaten face. In this parade of characters, the audience meets Madam Wong, the transparently emotional passive-aggressive Cantonese-speaking mother, and Cik Bee Bee, the endless spring of supportive love with a smile that conceals all. Crackling with tension and bravura, the play renegotiates the evolving giving and receiving dynamics between a mother and daughter in light of physical deterioration and dementia. The result is heartbreaking at times, but always humming with infinite tenderness.

At some points, portrayals of Madam Wong and Cik Bee Bee border on caricature – the mother obsessed with whether her daughter has eaten or the mother who keeps getting non-Chinese names wrong – but these moments are deliberately comic and comment on how nostalgia and the passing of time distorts of memories. For Wong and Noorlinah, memory acquires auditory, kinaesthetic and gustatory textures – Noorlinah assiduously romanising the Arabic script for her mother’s Hajj and Wong looking doe-eyed at her mother cooking up a storm.

At times, I found the lighting a tad jarring, especially in the sharp demarcations of scenes. Yet, some of the best scenes are achieved through the intelligent use of lighting, such as front lighting Noorlinah and Wong as they twirl around on stage to strains of Cantonese opera, producing enlarged silhouettes on the cyclorama, the telling presence of a larger, maternal figure as they yearn to be a child again and drink from the milk of maternal goodness.

What makes this such a compelling production is the well-paced direction and sensitive script, flowing with the natural cadences of everyday speech. When playing their mothers, there are long tracts of Cantonese and Malay, delivered without any surtitles. By the end of the play, when Wong and Noorlinah finally introduce the names of their mothers to us, whilst their mothers’ recorded voices play in the background, we feel like we have already met these wonderful women.