PRECISE PURPOSE OF BEING BROKEN by Koh Wan Ching

“precise purpose of being broken“

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 24 January 2019

Restaged for the M1 Fringe Festival, Koh Wan Ching’s precise purpose of being broken is an experimental and ambitious piece that pushes the boundaries of conventional manifestations of space and movement. Like a string of mismatched pearls, the piece consists of a series of vignettes taken from Haresh Sharma’s work, each more bewildering and obscure than the last. For those in want of strong, coherent narratives, look further afield: this piece is a challenging one, for artist and audience alike. Even the overarching themes that might have drawn all the disparate scenes together seem gossamer-thin.

The play begins in a shocking, nightmarish sequence where a grotesquely-masked actor levels accusations at the audience from a second-floor balcony. Later, other actors would dash in and out of different doors, and reappear on balconies and from side entrances, with screams and ululations heralding their entry. It is clear that much thought has been given to how this piece can fill the multi-storey space of the Esplanade Annexe.

In fact, the artistic team harnesses the properties of this repurposed building so successfully that the space almost becomes another actor in itself. By building upon the long shadows thrown by the ill-situated pillars and making use of pockets of dark corners, the play induces discomfiture and anxiety. Within this pregnant darkness, the actors’ bodies contort and transform into ghosts and phantoms, funeral-marching figures, plastic-suffocated mermaids, or a son on death row.

The characters portrayed are individual compelling, with the dialogue of the final vignette between a death row inmate and his mother being especially moving. However, while the piece is a laudable showcase of each actor’s dynamic range, the multitude of characters ultimately end up morphing into an almost nonsensical cacophony of voices and stories, drowning out the poignancy of the piece. But morever, there are so many moving parts here – from the collection of disparate excerpts to the elasticity of each performer’s role, to the incorporation of voiceovers and music – that it unfortunately never reaches the emotional depth that it strives for.