“Home is where the hurt is”

Reviewer: Myle Yan Tay
Performance: 4 November 2018

We walk into the skeleton of a home, thin metal wires for walls, artificial patches of green surrounding it, while Maslina (Dalifah Shahril) prepares dinner. Her two children, Zaki (Al Hafiz Sanusi) and Juliana (Shafiqhah Efandi), are in their room alternating between headlocks and chokes. And at the front door, Ruslan (Saiful Amri Ahmad Elahi) and an unknown character (Kaykay Nizam) dance and wrestle. And as the play progresses, this implied violence intensifies in waves of frenzy and control.

Twenty-three years after the first performance of his script, Cerita Cinta, Noor Effendy Ibrahim returns to recreate a tense, chilling, and thoroughly unnerving depiction of domestic violence. It is not an enjoyable piece of theatre. It is a harrowing story that fills the audience with dread that is only released when the actors bow at the curtain call. Effendy does not allow the audience any chance to escape the claustrophobic household, making its brief 70-minute runtime feel far longer.

Effendy and his team have a masterful control over the tension throughout this play. Dialogue is sparse and infrequent. The characters barely speak, and when they do, lines are only several words long. There are frequent silences accompanied by only small movements onstage, be it Ruslan’s father (Joe Jasmi) hovering over the dinner table, or Ruslan crossing the kitchen to wash his feet. But each moment feels fraught with danger.

Saiful deserves special recognition for his portrayal of Ruslan, the patriarch. As a character, Ruslan fluctuates between being dismissive, adoring and, more often than not, terrifying. Saiful successfully embodies all of these contradictions. Similarly, Kaykay, who plays both Juliana’s boyfriend and a stray dog, captures the audience’s attention with his physicality. He is both rough and graceful, and the moment when his two characters converge is unforgettable. The show’s scenes are punctuated by anGie seah’s haunting vocals, which are melancholic and beautiful.

Though Cerita Cinta almost suffocates its audience in its reality, it is worth reflecting on whether the show reproduces violence through its depiction. There is no stage combat in the show, meaning when a character is hit, they are truly hit. This choice pulled this reviewer out of the show, where concern for characters became concern for the actors instead. A show can still be immersive and safe without replicating what it attempts to critique. This production could have managed this same sense of terror without harmful physical contact, as seen in other moments of the play.