“Shakespeare, the writer of our discontent”

Reviewer: Walter Chan
Performance: 9 September 2016

“Who ever heard of a writer growing up happy?”

That quote comes in the middle of the performance of Sandaime Richard, written by Hideki Noda and inspired by Shakespeare’s Richard III. And when said writer is Shakespeare himself, you get a sense of the narrative complexity and comic irreverence of this play.

Directed by Ong Keng Sen (known for his other intercultural Shakespeare pieces like Lear and Lear Dreaming), Sandaime Richard uses Richard III to dive into the personal history of William Shakespeare, the author. Translated into a Japanese context, the events in Richard III is transformed into infighting within an ikebana (flower-arrangement) clan.

The Japanese context sets up an intercultural medley of performance styles: there is the rowdy and playful Takarazuka, such as when the ensembleof actors slip in and out of their roles to perform, then parody the personal drama of Shakespeare’s family. There’s a smattering of noh theatre during a particular scene in Kenzan Tower, where the dialogue oscillates between the noh style of slow, solemn chanting and a naturalistic delivery of lines. And that’s not to mention the Indonesian element, through the shadow puppetry of wayang kulit that mirrors the onstage action in some scenes.

I admit, this piece could be somewhat difficult for non-Japanese speaking audiences to follow (even with the surtitle screen on the side), given that the majority of the dialogue is in Japanese. (Oh, and I should mention that the other languages used in this play are Balinese, Bahasa Indonesia and English.) However, as with all his intercultural pieces, Ong’s dexterity with balancing different languages and performance styles not only demonstrates his deftness at constructing an intricate (or one might even say “difficult”) piece, but also challenges the audience to ponder about the frisson between the divergent elements in the performance.

And towards the end of the play, when all the different storylines (spoiler alert) converge and the story world collapses in upon itself, we are left in a dizzying spiral of delusions – the boundary between past/present, England/Japan, performance/reality is dissolved. The audience member walks out of the theatre, feeling very confused about the piece. But that’s probably the point – to throw supposedly stable elements, like the meaning of the words in Richard III, the history of Shakespeare’s life, and the authority of Shakespeare, into question.

“A game of throne: Cultural bytes, digital bits”

Reviewer: Beverly Yuen
Performance: 10 September 2016

Sandaime Richard, written by Hideki Noda and directed by Ong Keng Sen, is a bold encounter with works of William Shakespeare. It introduces Shakespeare (Doji Shigeyama) into the play as a character put on a trial for falsifying history of Richard the Third (Kazutaro Nakamura).  Inspired by the War of the Roses, the fight of an ikebana clan is depicted. The story is also staged in the framework of a Zen paradigm. This results in texts which suggest the non-duality of things, a minimalist set design, and repetitive patterns of multimedia images.

Each performer plays different characters. It is presented on a bare stage which is transformed into a series of digital images by Keisuke Takahashi. This creates a sense of a cyberspace, complemented with electronic music by Toru Yamanaka. The audience is thus put in a trance-like state, while the characters seem to be modified, re-edited, intertextualised and cross-referenced with the convenient use of editing technology.

In this induced digital world, the characters from Shakespeare’s texts are dressed in white surrealistic and futuristic costumes designed by Yanaihara Mitsushi. They are like avatars reprogrammed to take on changing identities or one that is faceless. In this flux, they challenge history, traditions and assumptions. Multimedia images such as the continuous feathers which endlessly fall on the characters and the circular shapes that sustained the scenes remind one of the cyclic existence of life.

The lighting design (Scott Zielinski) employs bold use of shadows, striking colours and follow spots to create the phantasmagorical world. Shadow play is an integral and essential element gives the characters a larger-than-life quality, while evoking a self-reflexive sense of mockery. While we are looking at the absurdity of how Shakespeare’s characters are transmuted with the development of the plot, we are also reminded that we should take time to laugh at the tough situations we sometimes go through.

Nakamura plays Richard with his feminine and yet strong physicality through his fluid and complete control of his movements and expressions grounded in kabuki techniques. Janice Koh, who plays Shylock, and Kyogen performer Doji Shigeyama, who plays Shakespeare, stand out with their hypnotic delivery of lines, and their ability to display the subtle changes in the characters.

Performed in English, Japanese and Bahasa Indonesia, with English surtitles, the different languages offer a certain musicality due to the variations of tone and rhythm of the poetic text. The occasional punctuations of live laughter, screaming, or groaning, add to the aural richness.

Multimedia images of fire appear in the beginning and towards the ending of the play, in the context of Shakespeare’s writings. It sets me thinking: in this digital age, can books really be burnt? Perhaps not. If so, does it mean that editing and re-editing; creation and re-creation; and examination and re-examination can be made possible with complete freedom? And, what would this freedom lead to?

The play ends with a whitewashed stage with wayang kulit puppeteer I Kadek Budi Setiawan’s chanting.

Emptiness.