“Suspense-filled masterpiece, but could do with more chemistry”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 14 October 2016

Asylum Theatre’s choice of Ira Levin’s 1978 comedy-thriller and its muted noir-esque set is full of promises, but it is a pity that this got eclipsed by poor acting.

In Act 1, we watch in suspense as it slowly builds up to a murder. Andrew Mowatt is perfect in the role of Sidney Bruhl, a once-successful playwright who finds himself running out of ideas, facing the prospect of becoming a has-been. He is nonchalant towards the murder he commits which makes for good comedy. He is careful not to over-play the part so as not as appear mad and thereby discrediting his own character.

Unfortunately, Elena Yeo, as his wife Myra, does not do justice to the play. Her acting is restrained and she lacks an emotional connection with her on-stage husband. She also struggles with her character’s British accent which further adds to the disparity.

The play is stronger in Act 2 as the focus shifts to other characters. But it also becomes different, more intellectual, like a metaphysical self-examination. We realise we are watching a play about a play that is being written as it plays out. Indeed, does Deathtrap exist outside our watching of it?

Deathtrap’s own status as a play is revealed through theatre references in Sidney and Clifford’s speeches. Various characters even muse about how an audience would interpret the events on stage. The effect of this is to implicate the audience in the unfolding. Of course this leads us to wonder whether we are merely watching a play, or if we too are actors in Ira Levin’s grand overarching play.

Despite going into the philosophical realm, the play still remains true to its comedy and thriller status by using the tried-and-tested methods and devices. For instance, through the use of caricatures like Bridget Fernandez’s Helga Ten Dorp, a gypsy who flamboyantly solves the murder using ESP, and Paul Lucas’ Porter Milgrim, a foolish lawyer with an annoyingly nasal voice.

Asylum Theatre’s Deathtrap is a good production by most counts, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it through the two acts. I just can’t help but wish that Myra’s role had been more suitably cast, or that there at least had been some chemistry between Sidney and Myra.

“Eliminating the Impossible from The 39 Steps”

Reviewer: Gan Soon Rui
Performance: 8 May 2015

Following Asylum Theatre’s well received debut, Holiday in My Head last year, the company kick-starts its new season with another comedy, The 39 Steps.

Adapted by Patrick Barlow and based on an original four-actor concept by Simon Corbel and Nobby Dimon, The 39 Steps is a stage adaptation of both John Buchan’s 1915 novel, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film of the same name.

The story follows the bumbling misadventures of Richard Hannay (played by Andrew Mowatt), a six-foot-one gentleman, with dark wavy hair, piercing blue eyes and a very attractive pencil moustache. As a result of the assassination on Annabella (played by Victoria Mintey), a foreign femme fatale he had met at a West End show, Hannay is forced to traverse across England to Scotland in order to escape arrest while finding the man that may stop the insidious plan set in motion by The 39 Steps.

The play is entirely self-reflexive and parodic in nature – one actor is required to play the protagonist Hannay while another actress play the role of the three women with whom he has romantic encounters. For the rest of the characters (and trust me, there are quite a number of them in the story), they are played interchangeably between two other actors.

Interestingly, director Dean Lundquist manages to up the ante, opting to compliment the comic effects through staging the play as a real “show” (a show within a show). Hannay, in this rendition, is supposedly played by a struggling actor-slash-owner of a small theatre company, the performance complete with a set of curtains with fraying patch works, and “economical” set design and effects.

While this layer was not explicitly performed, subtle displays of Lundquist’s influence show throughout the two hour long performance, much to the amusement of the audience.

In an oh-so-casual “oops” moment during the sequence in the train, Salesman 1 (played by Tim Garner) conveniently forgets to swap out the newsboy cap that he wore earlier as the Paperboy. This creates a deliberate and awkward pause between both Salesman 2 (played by Paul Lucas) and Hannay, subsequently forcing the latter to quietly break character and enlighten his colleague.

Hats off to Garner and Lucas, both of whom have the difficult task of changing between characters at the drop of the hat. Despite looking a little worse for wear towards the end of the performance, both actors perform consistently with superb comic timing and wonderful display of physical theatre, seamlessly playing off each other with impeccable coordination.

Suffice to say, this reviewer enjoy how the “show” is conscientiously bad and deliberately over-worked at dramatic segments in the performance, which make it reminiscent to some of the spy thrillers of days past, thus serving its purpose as a parody of sorts.

However improbable the chain of events in the plot, The 39 Steps still manages to woo over the audience with the cast’s physicality and humour.

“Christmas Comes Early”

Reviewer: Andre Theng
Performance: 27 September 2014, 8pm

I must admit that I did a double take when I read that a Christmas-themed play was being put up a good three months before Christmas. Now is not the “Christmas season,” regardless of how liberally the term is used.

Well, the good news is that Asylum Theatre’s debut performance “Holiday in my Head” is not really about Christmas – it is a series of 8 short, approximately 10-minute plays that simply have something to do with Christmas, be it where Santa Claus is a character or where the “naughty list” is mentioned. Even so, the Christmas theme is not altogether pervasive and only loosely joins the different plays together. All eight plays are written and directed by American Dean Lindquist, who (according to his website) specialises in 10-minute plays. Performed at the Drama Centre’s Black Box, the 11-day run was certainly impressive for a first outing.

The magic is in what actually links the eight plays together — a series of clever references not only to popular culture but also among the different plays, so much so that although each play was performed in isolation, there was a degree of reflexivity where each play built on the previous. I think this was the greatest achievement of the performance.

There were plays I liked more than others. I enjoyed “Finger Food” which allowed the audience to step into the minds of a fork and spoon lamenting their underuse, and the absurdist “The Joy of Solitude”, based on a Spanish play by Fernando Sorrentino. The six cast members were all excellent, especially Andrew Mowatt and Paul Lucas who flitted in and out of different roles effortlessly.

The performance was a simple affair — there were nearly no set pieces save for some tables and chairs and the rest of the magic was made up by good acting, lighting and sound effects and voice mimicry. It was an old-school, low-tech performance but the production values did not detract from the excellent scripts and actors.

Asylum is a little different from the many other newly-formed theatre companies. Where most new companies are helmed by young and passionate local students, Asylum is steered by an experienced and highly-qualified American director and playwright. I would thus expect it to take on projects beyond the scope of young student groups.

In any case, it is a promising start for a new theatre company, and exciting days for the Singapore English theatre scene, where new companies are proving to be formidable competition to the current strongholds of the theatre scene.