COLOURS by Split Theatrical Productions

“In Rainbows”

Reviewer: Edward Eng
Performance: 19 May 2019

In the post-show talk after a performance of my favourite play, Simon Stephens’ Seawall, actor Andrew Scott dispenses a piece of acting advice: “Your job is to play the light; the darkness always plays itself.”

Split Theatrical Production’s latest self-funded production, Colours, chases that method aggressively. Writer-director Darryl Lim’s play is about personal meaning and the perilous journey to try and create it. It is specifically about the experience in the context of early adulthood, even though the average age of the company is well under 30.

Comprising the individual stories of its six cast members, Colours is set on a metaphorical airplane. Perhaps appropriately, we are flying on an Airbus 380, which will soon be ceasing production. The piece is also mostly told through physical theatre, which means the quarter-life crisis being brought to life is quite literally playful.

The cast starts off by singing pop songs like “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars, and other cringey things. They then chat with the audience, asking us about our day and why we feel that way.

By the halfway mark – the six acts bear titles such as “the Heraclitean river of time” and “words crack” – the journey has gone completely sour. We now have red glow-sticks to hold in the dark, like emergency lamps at a crash site. They are singing “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree” as someone remembers their mother yelling, “Out! Out! Out! Out!” A birthday song becomes a private litany.

Lim treds some classic paths in fringe theatre. Personal stories, check. Work-in-progress look and feel, check. Fearlessness, check. But I feel it could have done more – the effect of sketching is only somewhat compelling, because there is little complexity by way of the questions asked.

This is something that I felt was awry with other recent productions helmed by young directors as well, such as Performing Malay Sketches by Second Breakfast Company and Faust/us by Nine Years Theatre. Why does everyone feel this way? Can we do anything about it? Should we do anything about it? What are the axioms on which our fears, expressions and joys stand?

Lim’s choreographer (Hong Guofeng) and sound designer (Te Hao Boon) also seem too busy chasing beautiful moments to let genuine tension build. Coupled with the extremely disparate sequences, this makes for choppy theatre.

That said, in Colours, there is strong evidence of daring, vivaciousness and heart. This is theatre worth watching and I will be waiting for what Lim and Split Theatre come up with next.