“I have loved you every day since the day you were born…”

Reviewer: Idelle Yee
Performance: 25 June 2019

American playwright Paula Vogel’s How I Learned To Drive first premiered Off-Broadway in 1997, and it won her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1998. Watching Wag the Dog’s production of the play, this reviewer understands why it’s such a powerful work. While distinctly American in its cultural references and setting, the play’s explicit portrayal of sexual abuse, pedophilia and incestuous behaviour still retains its unique ability to discomfit any audience.

The story follows a non-linear narrative, with Li’l Bit (Victoria Mintey) recounting various episodes from her childhood. She grapples with her sexually abusive relationship with her Uncle Peck all through her adolescent years, as well a toxic family culture surrounding discussions of the female body and sexuality. Uncle Peck is the only one in the family who supports Li’l Bit’s dreams of college. He teaches her how to drive. But he is also an unrepentant and progressively delusional pedophile.

One must give Sean Worrall credit for his committed performance of this man, who is in equal parts pitiful and revolting. He is a plague upon himself and the young child whom he grooms in warped perceptions of female beauty, desirability, and the freedom to love and be loved. Some of the most repulsive exchanges take place when he offers words of affection that actually come from a place of twisted obsession: “Li’l Bit, I love you… I have loved you every day since the day you were born.” Can there be anything more horrifying than the truth?

In Wag the Dog Theatre’s staging of the play, it is truth and transparency itself that terrifies, with partially obscured faces speaking from behind translucent screens. These voices, which belong to Li’l Bit’s other family members, provide a commentary and reveal secrets that she is blissfully unaware of as she plays out her memories on stage. The figure of the young girl is consistently rendered vulnerable by her lack of access to information, entrenching her in the position of prey.

Susie Penrice Tyrie, who plays various Greek-chorus-like characters with great aplomb, issues memorable one-liners in the most droll of voices. At one point, she delivers with judgey pursed lips and a hoity-toity tone that “a wet woman is still more conspicuous than a drunk woman”. The audience chuckles, but we know this caricature of the older woman in a young girl’s life is a reminder of how ignorance and closed-mindedness are perpetuated within a family, generation after generation.

This also makes the dripping malice of Li’l Bit’s Aunt Mary, whom Tyrie portrays later on, land with greater force. It is a reminder that the greatest damage is often done to us by those who sit close by and speak with affection — who claim that they love us.

This is a story about secrets, about the demons that burn us up and hurt those around us. But it is also about the catharsis of articulating and exorcising the memories that fester within, and then, like Li’l Bit, flooring the gas pedal, and learning to drive into a new and better life.

“Caveat emptor.”

Reviewer: Christian W. Huber
Performance: 17 May 2018

Marketed as a cross between stylish American period TV series Mad Men and docu-style comedy The Office, The Consultant by Heidi Schreck is the play Wag the Dog Theatre chose as its sophomoric outing. Set shortly after the global financial crisis of 2008, it leads the audience on a rather pointless journey of office shenanigans in a pharmaceutical advertising agency.

Set in New York, the play presents the workday lives of four people trying to balance their paychecks with their personal aspirations and troubles. After a serious meltdown during an ad pitch presentation, Jun Suk (a rather sedate Mark Seow) is given the chance to make amends when the company hires a consultant, Amelia (a quirky Deborah Hoon) to help improve his presentational skills. However, she is only a graduate student, and without any substantial coaching experience, she aims to train Jun Suk with the help of a single book on negotiation that she borrowed from the local library. He agrees reluctantly, and therein the comedy ensues.

The piece lacks much in plot, and more in character development. Its only saving grace is the witty dialogue, and the way that Amelia helps Jun Suk present better has some genuine ‘ha-ha’ moments. Otherwise, Schreck’s characters amount to merely portraits that never really go anywhere – their circumstances change, but their personalities and understanding of the world do not. The television style of writing does not work well on stage, while the unnecessary interval spoiled the momentum of this 80-minute piece, and dragged out the tedium of the performance.

Apart from usual first night jitters of a preview performance – including technical issues, gaffes and mistimed punchlines – the actors’ various styles of delivery also make it a discomforting experience from the get go. Hoon and Seow use rather neutral accents, which don’t gel with the awful Americanized accents by the other characters (from Krissy Jesudason’s irritating Brooklyn accent, to Sean Worrall’s middling Mid-American, to the OTT one of Susie Penrice Tyrie in what thankfully was a small role), and makes for a very unevenly paced and disengaging performance.

Wag the Dog Theatre prides itself in being Singapore’s first theatre co-op theatre, which aims to produce “high quality performances on the leanest of budgets” according to its Facebook page. Its inaugural show last year received respectable responses from the audience, but it’s somehow deflated a bit with the ‘am-dram’ (amateur dramatics) feel of this production. This reviewer hopes for better days ahead for them, as there is much that a group of artists can offer with good material and heart, without it coming across as a vanity project that lacks soul.

“The Memory of Not Watching a Show“

Reviewer: Isaac Tan
Performance: 4 July 2017

In light of current events, in which a tussle within a prominent family has been aired on every platform available, Wag the Dog Theatre’s debut production of The Memory of Water is certainly a coincidence.

Alas, it is not a happy one.

The familial tussle of the show revolves around three daughters who have returned to their family home to arrange their mother’s funeral. In the course of doing so, all of them unravel at certain points as they have to confront certain memories, and come to grips with their own failings.

The Guardian’s Matt Trueman may have called Shelagh Stepheson’s play “a delicate treatise on human nature”, but neglects to inform his readers that it is bubble-wrapped with a lot of words, mounds of them.

Unfortunately, most of the actors fail to handle the text in such a way that engages the audience that uncovers meaningful truths for both parties.  Deborah Hoon plays the uptight and well-organised Teresa, an alternative therapy business owner who feels that her sisters are not pulling their weight. Hoon seems uncomfortable in her performance because she is burdened with maintaining an accent while trying to find variation to Theresa’s tenseness, but ultimately fails.

Krissy Jesudason initially entertains with her exuberant portrayal of Catherine, the wild child of the family. While Catherine’s histrionics and unpredictable temperament is fun to watch, it starts to grate after three scenes of the same thing. When she finally unravels, one’s disdain for her is too great that it buries any sympathy one may have.

Thankfully, there is no family resemblance in Victoria Mintey’s performance as Mary, the cynical high-achiever with a chequered past. Behind ever scowl and caustic remark lie thoughtfulness and intentionality. As such, her final breakdown and subsequent attempt to pick up the pieces is as painful as it is wonderful to watch.

Mark Seow as Mike— a television doctor who is dating Mary while tending to his sick wife— is clueless in tackling his character. He opts to settle for an easy-going character and sticks with it. When Mike is supposed to be surprised by the possibility of Mary being pregnant, Seow is tentative and unassured, and quickly slips back to the default choice the first instance he gets.

This long-drawn show, like the one brewing outside of the theatre, could not have ended soon enough. If only Teresa could recommend a potion which erases selected memories, and recover lost time—all 150 minutes of it.