“灵戏“

Reviewer: Liu Chang | 刘畅
Performance: 28 October 2017

<灵戏>讲述的是“我方”的历史。

历来战争中的任何一方都有充分理由称自己为正义的“我方”，他者都被笼统地称之为“敌方”，无论从历史的角度看谁是侵略者谁是抵抗侵略者谁又是第三方。 <灵戏>暗射了二战时期日本入侵东南亚（马来亚、新加坡）这段历史，并以侵略者一方的有限视角看待战争。

战争结束后，五个因战争遗留在被侵略国度里的“我方” 鬼魂无家可归。他们又一次聚首，重温往事，控诉战争给自己及周遭亲友带来的刻骨铭心的伤害。

虽均属于“我方”，这五个鬼魂生前身份各异，死后思想亦迥然不同。将军秉承侵略者方主流意识形态，即使已化为魂灵，依然信奉穷兵黩武，推崇“残”兽的贪婪残酷精神。汉子、母亲和姑娘是这场战争中“我方”的亲历者、被动参与者、边缘人士和底层小人物。他们执念控诉的是战争对自己、家庭、亲友和战友们的身心伤害。比起前四位，诗人（记者）的悲悯之心略显广博，理性地反思侵略行为及其负面后果，颂扬神鸟“祥”的博爱与奉献，但关注的依然多是本民族的爱与伤痛，并没有过多地对被侵略民族表达关怀与同情。

<灵戏>最初由新加坡戏剧大师郭宝菎创作于1998年，抛开直接描写被侵民族伤痛的叙事传统，而以这种有限的“我方”视角真实地反映、反思了战争为侵略者一方带来的惨痛代价。一将功成万骨枯，汉子和诗人、甚至某种程度上连将军都充当了帝国的血肉资本，妈妈和姑娘则为帝国的野心扩张献出了家庭和性。

<灵戏>曾一度对主流历史叙事进行了极大的挑战，对战争依然记忆犹新的被侵民族也无法接受这种正面表现“敌方”伤痛的题材。如今二十年过去，关于世界上每一场重要的战争，交战双方、第三方等都出版了大量的资料来解密、诠释、反思和控诉，各国民众对待战争也具备了更加理性和辩证的认识。在此背景下，<灵戏>今年再次上演引起的震撼和争议也许未必强过当年，但依然有重要的反战意义，它的独特声音和精湛艺术效果不会被淹没于历史资料之中。

并且此次上演，导演使用了The Finger Players最擅长的偶戏，成功营造了战争的惨烈和鬼魂世界的诡异凄惶；并在原著的基础上添加了三个黑衣鬼的角色，分别代表了“贪”、“嗔”和“痴”，从人性和信仰的维度上反思这场战争，同时又很好地补充诠释了剧中关于神鸟“祥”和“残”兽的隐喻，更全面地展现了人性中恶与善的矛盾对立。

“The Spirits Play”

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 28 October 2017

Recently staged in 2015 at the Drama Centre Black Box, The Finger Players brings back its production of The Spirits Play, with director Oliver Chong making some changes to this production since the 2015 version.

An obvious difference would be the current production’s staging at the Victoria Theatre, a much larger, proscenium space. To this end, the set design with two levels, and the spirits’ voluminous, abstract costumes create visual interest and certainly help to fill the space. While the overall staging design, including live sound and puppetry, is generally effective in evoking a dark, melancholy yet contemplative atmosphere, the spirits’ slightly over-the-top costumes may have detracted slightly from that contemplative mood.

The Spirits Play, one of the last pieces by playwright Kuo Pao Kun’s plays, deals with the horrors of war – the waste and despair that it brings for all involved, regardless of whose side they are on. The play is a challenging one to perform, not least because of the heavy subject matter. In this version, a lot of focus is also required for the almost one hour and forty-five-minute running time, during which the characters of the General, Man, Mother and Girl never leave the stage.

They begin almost as if at an annual gathering, remarking on the weather, enquiring after one another; but their awkward, stilted tone tells you something is not quite right. As the play progresses, we hear from each of them their stories, told in overlapping vignettes – weak and injured soldiers abandoned by their own commanders, a wife searching for the dead body of her husband knowing full well the futility of the undertaking, a female nurse violated by members of her own army. Against the backdrop of all this, the General expresses no remorse for his actions.
As the spirits search, accuse, reflect, and mourn over the course of the play, it becomes apparent that their questions have no answers.

The cast is strong on the whole, managing well the emotionally charged text and shifts in intensity. Where the performance is less strong, however, is in the movement. Near the beginning and end, the spirits glide around the stage in choreographed sequences – while this bookending is a clear directorial strategy, it does not feel like the relatively long movement sequences are crucial to the performance. In addition, the movements of the three characters dressed in black (who function as a chorus of sorts) can be more precise; moments of non-synchronicity detracted from the otherwise arresting visual picture.

Nevertheless, we are left with a haunting final image: the five spirits returning to their graves, falling snow, and a blackout revealing a blood red full moon. This is one of the few hints of the play’s cultural context – although the spirits are ostensibly Japanese, in this staging there are few identifiable markers of setting. All the better to reflect on the universality of the play’s underlying message; all war is cruel, no matter where or when.

“A puppeteer’s spin on a classic script”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 5 November 2015

A life-size dummy hanging on a noose greets us. Even in the dim light, one can clearly make out its silhouette. On the floor, four other bodies lay motionless. Each ‘corpse’ is ‘buried’ beneath a heap of white paper confetti that resembles snowflakes. After a while, they start looking like papier mâché mummies.

When the lights come on, three figures in black appear. Their faces are painted black, leaving a margin of skin bordering their faces, resulting in a mask-like feature. These three characters do not assume a clear identity in the play. They have no lines, except hissing echoes of lines spoken by the main cast. They sneer sinisterly and contort their bodies to project an eeriness of the ethereal world.  On a functional level, they are Kurogos, supporting cast that traverse between the fictional and the real world, working the stage business while maintaining neutrality.

After the three ‘spirits’ had a game of tug-of-war with the now-decapitated dummy, dismembering it into its component limbs, the ‘corpses’ rise. As the four bodies prop themselves up, the paper fragments fall off their bodies, trembling like loose earth – as if they were really rising from the dead.

These four ghoulish characters – Girl, Mother, Man and General – act as four lenses through which we view ‘war’. From their accounts, we see war from the perspectives of a nurse forced into being a comfort woman, a widow who lost her husband to war, a soldier receiving orders and the Commander who issues them.

Director Oliver Chong’s revival of The Spirits Play is largely faithful to Kuo Pao Kun’s writing, which also means there are no surprises in the plot. But I was relieved to see the directorial decision to splice paragraphs from the original monologues of the Girl, Mother and Man and reconstitute them into a series of exchanges. I feel that this combined account gives a more meaningful, multi-faceted picture of the war, rather than making the audience sit through 3 long monologues, which I imagine could be rather dry.

Veteran actor Johnny Ng, as General, distinguishes himself from the rest of the cast with his experienced vocal techniques to deliver long paragraphs of text. While I do empathise with the emotional wreck the rest of the cast is put through, their outbursts remain rather one-dimensional. Perhaps, this play asks for too much from its performers?

The play comes full circle as it centres on the theme of war and sacrifice. As it snows confetti at the end, mirroring the confetti under which they were buried in the first scene, we are left with the haunting question of whether these characters go through the same monologues and arguments each year, like an endless cycle of seasons. Do they have to relive the war-inflicted pain over and over again, like a torture in hell? The play is poignant and despondent this way.

Despite that, this play does not put too much emphasis on any particular war that happened in our time, which rightly makes it universal. It seems to claim that any war fought equates to the loss of lives, whether one is on the winning side or not. Any war story is just as woeful as another.