“Preach it”

Reviewer: Gabriel Lim
Performance: 25 April 2015

In the story of Adam and Eve, Eve was tricked by a serpent into eating the forbidden fruit to gain immortality. She entices Adam to do so as well. However, the fruit gave them something else; the knowledge to judge right from wrong.

But what if right and wrong is all … relative?

“Hawa” in Arabic has several meanings. It can mean the biblical figure Eve, wind, and sometimes desire. Hawa, the production, attempts to interpret life and death, and reconsiders faith and love. A recent Islam convert, Siti (Isabella Chiam), is given the responsibility by her partner Sarah to oversee her funeral. She hasn’t got a clue what to do. Enters an undertaker (Saiful Amri) who instructs Siti on the funeral processes. Siti is thrust into different situations; one of which is to gather enough people to pay their respects, a condition of the funeral. She is faced with a decision of whether or not to notify Sarah’s family of her funeral; and later she is compelled to do a water cleansing on Sarah’s corpse. To add to the series of misadventures, the play introduces Zaki (Al-Matin Yatim) who gatecrashes the funeral with an unseemly ambition to hook up with Hijabistas (or a fashionable Muslim woman). The result: an impossible funeral scene that questions the place of homosexuality (between Sarah and Siti) in Islam, through conversations that is thought-provoking and humorous.

Director Faizal Abdullah paces the play with great intricacy and sensitivity from start to end. The transition of scenes offers a room for meditation with its use of aphoristic motifs of tarot cards and Rumi’s words flashed across the veiled backdrop. Sound designer Suhaili Safari adds to the mix with a haunting voice-over of the text. In another instance, the use of a phone as a recurring communicative device in the play helps to bridge the storyline on-stage and off-stage, even though it is over-exploited. Zaki is the proverbial wild card. He challenges Siti’s view of Islam and becomes an instrumental force in the funeral proceedings.

Hawa carries with it the refrain of ‘sin is but a name’. This series of misadventures does not advocate doing away with tradition, but asks us to reconsider it. When the undertaker takes his time to demonstrate the ablution, that moment of wordless ritual is one of the instances that gave the audience space and time to reflect.

The only gripe I have for this production is a technical one. The surtitles presented the production’s major flaw. The syncing of surtitles and dialogue is often off. However, this can be overlooked as it hardly compromises the overall experience.

With a young team of theatre practitioners, Hatch Theatrics’ first show of the year impresses and sets the bar high for their future productions.

“Final Ablution”

Reviewer: Beverly Yuen
Performance: 25 April 2015

The power of a poignant story told with nuance and complexity, coupled with sharp directing and strong acting results in a stunning, moving and thought-provoking performance entitled Hawa. Hawa, a Malay word which means the Quranic Eve or female, is written by Johnny Jon Jon, presented by Hatch Theatrics and directed by Faizal Abdullah.

The play opens with Siti (Isabella Chiam), a Chinese who recently converted to Islam, making funeral arrangements for her close Malay friend Sarah, who is later revealed to be her lover. Disowned by her parents for living a life of sin, Siti moved in with Sarah and lived in a small isolated world of their own. After Sarah’s death, Siti finds herself having no friends to invite to the funeral and she is reluctant to inform Sarah’s parents of her partner’s demise. Ahmad (Saiful Amri), the funeral director, tells her she must arrange for many people to be present at the prayers, and if she is unable to do so, he can help her with the task by charging her $5 per person. Siti refuses. She is then greeted by a “funeral crasher”, Zaki (Al-Matin Yatim) who claims that it is his duty to God to comfort the “veiled woman”. Through witty exchanges between the three characters and vignettes of memories, the romantic story of Siti and Sarah, Zaki’s family woes, and Ahmad’s religious livelihood unfold.

As a female is required to give ablution to a female corpse and Ahmad’s wife who usually handles this task for him is serving as a midwife in another household, Siti is asked to carry out the work of washing the body. Ahmad demonstrates on Zaki the meticulous process of bathing, dressing and wrapping up the dead. The breathless silence from the audiences who watch intently lulls them into a state of meditation. The final ablution of the dead almost serves as a cathartic for the observers too. The delivery of a baby and the completion of the ablution take place concurrently towards the end of the play, which suggest the beginning of a fresh journey. Siti eventually agrees to pay a fee for Ahmad to assemble a crowd for prayer before the dead is buried.

Through a courageous portrayal of a homosexual relationship between two races, with liberal references to Islam and God, the play questions the meaning of sin, holiness, rules and love. The minimalist lighting which plays with shadows, the white translucent pieces of cloth that form the set on which poetic texts about stages of life are projected, and the sweet scent in the space offer me a simple and aesthetically pleasing haven for reflection, a good contrast to the emotive issues presented in the play. There is an undercurrent of unsaid negotiations between self and Self; self and the play. This is a beautifully sorrowful; poetically explosive; humorously serious piece of work.