DESCENDANTS OF THE EUNUCH ADMIRAL by Esplanade’s The Studios: fifty

“Tough to Swallow”

Reviewer: Casidhe Ng
Performance: 30 April 2015

It is often difficult to approach a play with established history, especially one that holds as much significance as Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral. Written by Kuo Pao Kun and first staged in 1995, Descendants has since become a Singapore classic – a powerful tale of identity and modernity, ideas that have been and still are prevalent in our society.

Jeff Chen’s no-holds-barred adaptation of the play is one that plunges the traditional script into a variety of abstract symbols, the product being a 75-minute offbeat, primal and unconventional iteration. Wong Chee Wai’s set from Twelve Angry Men, is a long room with a table, playing on the audience’s perspective and inducing a sense of mild vertigo, as if foreshadowing the confounding play to come.

Chen juggles several elements concurrently, from pre-recorded script extracts performed by theatre veterans, to physical work and stage pictures by the performers, multimedia, symbols and stage business. Despite the amount of potentially dislocating action and permutations, the play manages to achieve occasional moments of impact.

In one particularly unsettling scene, lines describing pleasure, submission and obedience are broadcast as two concurrent videos are screened side-by-side. The audience is fed videos of minute parts of the skin, raw and in flux, and membrane-like, organic, veils of unidentified material post-penetration. As the recorded text escalates in intensity, the initially microscopic snippets zoomed out to form identifiable parts of the human body, in particular the genital area and clumps of (presumably) pubic hair. The entire sequence, the cohesive combination of the text and voice-over with the disturbing multimedia, effects a gradual heightening sense of unease and discomfort – one of the few moments that incited genuine emotion.

The rest of the abstract symbols that follow, however, possess varying degrees of legibility. The play appears to crack under the hefty weight of its referencing – the play becomes cumbersome and at times difficult to sit through. The penultimate sequence matches the recorded text with Najib Soiman, Jean Ng and Nora Samosir in a balloon-making competition followed swiftly by the bounding of a scantily-clad Timothy Nga to a table while a sandbag is lifted and dropped repeatedly. This is overwhelming to say the least. The occasional Brechtian devices deployed to alienate and disengage the audience (house lights are turned on at one point and the backstage crew is prevalent motif) disorientates more than distance and this further reinforces the disjunction of the piece.

In essence, it’s not a particularly comfortable ride. The set, lighting and sound are terrific but built upon the weak foundation of an onslaught of increasingly discombobulated symbols that ultimately fail to cohere. Yet, it is apparent to see that this is Chen at the height of his powers: an exercise of freedom and audacity on his part, an adamant breaking down of conventions, and a notable addition to the play’s history. To some this adaptation may be vulgar, destructive and utterly disrespectful to the source material, but it is impossible to deny that it has challenged pre-conceived notions, pushed boundaries and has perhaps made many question the nature of theatre itself. It may have ultimately been a failure, but it is certainly an honorable one.