“Double-Bill: Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain & Hawa”

Reviewer: Isaac Lim 
Performance: 2 July 2016

It may be easy to label these two plays as essentially Malay plays, centred on Malay and Islamic issues in Singapore. However, the two plays, presented as a double-bill, are much more than the race and religion they appear to represent.

Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain attempts to expose the ‘Mat Moto’ subculture to a wider audience. It strives to get people to understand the mentality of Malay motorcyclists on the road, and issues they face off the road. The play follows four best friends from the day they got their 2B riding licences, through multiple skids and accidents and hospital stays, until one major crash that ends with a fatality.

The scenes are all a tad under-developed, too short for the emotions of the characters to build up, and often snaps at an anti-climax. When the story fails to unravel itself through the dialogues, characters are then given awkward and unnecessary expository monologues. The actors were rather casual in their performance throughout. They occasionally lack the energy to project their voices, even in over-the-top scenes in which their characters are arguing with each other.

Perhaps, rather unfair in comparison, Hawa (which both refers to the Quranic Eve and the female gender) is a far more nuanced piece.

Hawa brings together alternative views on Islam as a religion, and female homosexuality. Siti (played by Koh Wan Ching) is a recent convert, and is faced with having to settle the funeral rites of her deceased partner. In the span of half a day, she struggles between fulfilling the duty of being the only next-of-kin and the demands of her new religion. Then come Ahmad (Saiful Amri), the funeral services director with a fabulous sense of dark humour, and Zaki (Al-Matin Yatim), a funeral gatecrasher of sorts. The three are embroiled in conversations about life, the after-life, religious obligations, and religion rights, in a convivial but non-diminutive manner.

The actors play the respective characters with conviction, making them believable and relatable. Koh, as Siti, manages to present her frustrations and worries without coming across as unreasonable. Yatim as the endearing Zaki who goes to strangers’ funerals to “provide comfort to (our) veiled sisters” is so wrong, but nonetheless charmingly portrayed.

Marketing the two shows as a double-bill calls for unnecessary comparisons. The three-hour run time of the two plays also tests the audiences’ patience. No matter how good the plays were, there was a slightly audible collective sigh of relief heard at the end of the evening.

“Double-Bill: Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain & Hawa”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 30 June 2016

In Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain (Riders), four impressive looking motorbikes line side by side upstage composing an Instagram-worthy set. It is a coming-of-age story about four friends, within the oft-misunderstood mat motor community in Singapore, whose lives are anything but picture perfect.

Riders opens with its four protagonists gathered around a void deck’s circular stone chairs and tables. A versatile setting chosen for its possible negative associations as a place where rowdy and rebellious youths hang out or smoke. The chairs niftily change into traffic barriers in the last scene.

Broken families, unstable financial incomes and a knack for everything but academics, forces them to juggle familial responsibilities, work and school simultaneously. This leaves them with their love for motorbikes and makes their passion for riding the only escape from life. Unfortunately, their love for motorbikes is a double edged sword, binding them as well as dividing them.

During the soliloquies, characters pour their hearts out and turn stereotypes about motorists on its head. No doubt such a direct mode of presentation is at once personal and forthright but it comes across as too simplistic for a professional cast. After all, “show not tell” is the modus operandi of theatre.

In Hawa, Siti (Koh Wan Ching), a Chinese who recently converted to Islam, is overwhelmed by the sudden responsibility to oversee the funeral arrangements for her Malay girlfriend. As she grapples to come to terms with her loss, the funeral director and a “gate crasher thief” reminds her to fulfil her religious and social obligations.

Koh is sincere and sensitive in her portrayal of Siti. Understandably crude and curt in her exchanges with the others, she succinctly delivers the complex emotions and struggles of a homosexual faced with rejection from family and religion.

Saiful Amri is charming and comical as a funeral director who lives by the mantra “business is business” and “a human only has dignity when he is alive.”

Al-Matin Yakim is able to hold his own as Zaki, the uninvited mourner. A conscientious and conservative portrayal saves that character from coming across as a sleazy and one-dimensional hijab-chasing deviant.

Hawa boldly interrogates the position and value of religion in today’s society where faith seems to be waning in the face of progress in science and where heterosexuality is no longer the only sexuality endorsed. Non-Muslim audiences are also treated to a rare opportunity to peek into the rituals behind an Islam funeral.

“Double-Bill: Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain & Hawa”

Reviewer: Dawn Teo
Performance: 30 June 2016

Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain is a glimpse into the mat moto subculture, complete with lingo of the Singapore motorbiking community and youths going with the fast ride. Audience members follow the journey of four friends from the day of receiving their 2B licenses to the unexpected detour of their friendships.

The play is presented mostly in Malay as it captures the essence of its characters as well as the culture itself. Having surtitles help non-Malay speakers to understand the conversations, but even through the acting, I am able to figure out what is going on at any given point in time.

Straightforward, clear and heartfelt, I find myself empathising with all the characters throughout the play. Nessa Anwar captures their growth and personalities in her writing simply, and the actors have tremendous chemistry in breathing life into the characters.

Some scene changes felt clumsy and excessive but each setting is used to great effect and adding layers of meaning to the text.

Through the building up and the slow burn of events, the ending for Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain really hit it home for me. I enjoy how the fragments hinted through the play came together in the end without the over-explanation and fuss.

Hawa delves deep into the topic of religion, sexuality and love. This text-heavy piece is mainly presented in English, which provides a good guide to the audience on certain Islam-specific terms. Dialogue is the key to this play. Many back-and-forth banter question each character’s beliefs and intentions, while giving audience members the space to be part of that conversation.

The gem in Hawa is really watching the whole process of cleaning a body – how to cover it and clothe it with white pieces of cloth. Being able to witness something so intimate and important proves to be meditative, and somehow, very emotional.

Catching both plays in a single night is quite an experience since I got to see multiple aspects of the Malay culture and Islam side-by-side. Considering that I am not part of these groups, it is a true privilege to be able to experience these events in the form of theatre and educate myself further.