FALLING by Pangdemonium

“The More Loving One”

Reviewer: Alex Foo
Performance: 28 May 2016

First things first, Falling is not a play about autism – that much is clear right from the first line of the director’s message .  The ‘falling’ is a family falling apart and losing control. Perhaps this play is more about coping, portraying how an average family deals with and loves an autistic child.

Andrew Marko plays Josh, the severely autistic child, and convincingly commits to his role, down to the slurred speech and the manifest posturing. Tan Kheng Hua plays the mother, Tami, with gravity and grace, appearing in virtually every scene and soldiering on with a boundless reservoir of patience (mollifying a belligerent child takes on a whole new level). Playwright Deanna Jent’s script raises plenty of uncomfortable questions about the realities of living with a volatile child, and of course, there are no easy answers. As witnesses to these extremely private domestic moments, we are as shocked as Nana (the side-splitting Neo Swee Lin) when we share in her dismay over Josh’s aggression, and equally as powerless. The refrain “I don’t know what to say” is not just the family’s disconsolate utterance, but also that of the audience’s.

The great triumph in Tracie Pang’s direction is probing the emotional implications of Josh’s disability on familial relationships. Tami and Bill (Adrian Pang) clash over their views on sending Billy to a home; Nana begins as the Bible-quoting, prayer-dispensing comic relief but slowly gains understanding; Lisa (Fiona Lim) desires escape and begrudges the prioritization of Josh’s needs over hers. Regrettably, Lim has a less commanding stage presence beside her co-stars, and the opportunity to explore a more complicated relationship with her brother is glossed over for a one-note angst-ridden teenage disdain.

Wong Chee Wai and Chris Chua’s suburban HDB flat functions as both domicile and enclosure. Nana and Lisa have the option of leaving for Australia, Bill teeters close on the precipice of divorce, but it is Tami and Josh who are ‘stuck’ – the former trapped by virtue of her consuming maternal responsibilities, and the latter by his mental affliction.

I am also not so certain if the melodramatic opening number was all that necessary. Surreal, yes. But what deeper point does it make? But there are other more successful sequences, particularly the final scene. As the poet WH Auden would say, “If equal affection cannot be, /Let the more loving one be me.”