RUBBER GIRL ON THE LOOSE by Cake Theatrical Productions

“Rubber Girl on the loose”

Reviewer: Amanda Leong
Performance: 30 March 2019

The title Rubber Girl on the loose is a curious one. Who or what is a rubber girl? Can a person be made of rubber? What does it mean to have a rubber-like personality? This is my first encounter with a Cake Theatrics production, and I’m not sure what to expect based on the image conjured by the title.

The Rubber Girl, performed by Sarah Chaffey, soon makes an appearance. She is Antigone, a young woman from Thebes who defies her uncle and ruler Creon’s law to bury her brother Polynices. She walks around the space, using her body to bend and stretch a large rubber band. She is as strong and elastic as this rubber band.

This elasticity – its anxiety-inducing stretch and release – permeates the rest of this atmosphere, exciting, and tiring two-hour piece. For the first half of the performance, I am intrigued by the creativity of the stagecraft and direction. However, the sheer number of different elements occurring on the stage overwhelms me after a while, and ends up hindering my experience.

There are some elements that enhanced the piece. In one scene, a naked body lying on the side of the stage, covered with dirt, rises. This is Polynices, played truthfully and hauntingly by Nicholas Tee, and he tells us about his curse to roam as a spirit. In another scene, the projector beams a window into the underworld onto the screen, where we see the blind prophet Tiresias, and Polynices’ parents, Jocasta and Oedipus. The image of Oedipus, portrayed by Edith Podesta with blood stains on a cloth wrapped around her head where her eyes were, ingrains itself in my memory. There is an apt comparison to be drawn between the god-like realm and the worlds that we access through our computer screens –they seem distant, but are in actuality deeply entwined with our lives.

However, there are other elements that feel either excessive or underutilized. The live musician, Berlin-based Matthias Engler, is tangential at best and distracting at worst. And while West Papuan dancer Darlane Litaay’s beautiful and precise physical movement brings up the deep psychical drama, we are never fully given the space to appreciate his craft or his role, as his subtle performance is usually overshadowed by all the other loud elements in the piece.

Overall, Rubber Girl on the loose is an exciting rendition of the classic tragedy, Antigone, especially as it attempts to use various elements to express the unspoken tension that drives the piece. It is pity that they do not tie in together cohesively in the end. Instead, it floats in the shadow of the promises of what it could have been, just like Polynices’ restless ghost.