With all
the songs that tell of love and loss these days, it is really quite
hard to grasp the true meaning of love. Such an intangible thing it
seems to be.
Dangerous Liaisons makes the notion of love even more complicated.
It is generally believed that women are at the losing end when a relationship
is terminated, because we are a more emotional species. Yet that doesn't
seem to be the case for la Marquise de Merteuil.
The Marquise is a scheming woman who has always had an upper hand in
the games of love she plays. Her captivating personality makes it difficult
for men to resist her charms. Enter her equally alluring accomplice,
le Vicomte de Valmont - wealthy, hedonistic and ruthless. These
ex-lovers set out to destroy the innocence of Cecile de Volanges, a
convent-bred 15-year-old, and also the virtue of Madame de Tourvel,
a married woman known for her strict morals and religious fervour.
Tan Kheng Hua, who acted as the conniving Marquise, had the chance
to show off her physical prowess, literally. A monologue about how she
has invented her public self sent her climbing and twirling on the posts
of the swings on the set as she spoke. I have to admit that I was impressed
at how she was able to go through the entire routine without even panting.
Unfortunately, the stunts overshadowed her general performance. Andrea
De Cruz, on the other hand, did a memorable job as the delicate Madame
de Tourvel without executing fancy moves of any sort. De Cruz had strong
stage presence and her performance was made complete with good delivery
of the classical-sounding language.
Goh Boon Teck's use of swings and slides as main props on stage was
creative. It not only suggested that love is a playground, especially
for the protagonists, it was also a rather novel approach to take, staging
a play set in the eighteenth century in such a way. The playful set
may have been a tad incongruous with the weighty issues the play discussed,
yet at the same time it cannily brought out the fact that love can indeed
be dangerous. However, the swings did pose a slight problem in terms
of blocking, which director Beatrice Chia had presumably chosen to sacrifice
for a the sake of a more interesting presentation of the play.
The production crew certainly put in a great deal of effort to create
a continuous flow of sights and sounds for the performance. Each section
of the play was presented in a different colour scheme: airy-fairy pink
in the beginning, deepening to a plush red as the play progressed to
its climax, and finally an ominous dark blue. The aesthetics of the
performance contributed a pleasing flourish to the already-full script.
Chia has taken the risk of staging a highly complex and deep play,
and I say it was a risk well-taken. Christopher Hampton's play allows
the audience to encounter lust, sex, power, manipulation and love all
in one sitting. Its view of love is pessimistic, and yet it posits that
no one can escape it nonetheless.
In this production, the audience was not offered a spectacular, jaw-dropping
performance, but I believe it gave them quite a ride and something worthwhile
to consider about the funny thing we call love. |
"The audience was not offered a spectacular, jaw-dropping performance,
but I believe it gave them quite a ride and something worthwhile to
consider about the funny thing we call love"
|
