World-in-Theatre
is a bit of an anachronistic anomaly in today's theatre scene of Dim
Sum Dollies, Tops
and Bottoms, and all the Shopping
and Fucking going on. The company is known for its infusion
of traditional Asian art forms, including Japanese Noh theatre, Malay
martial arts and Indian dance, into its staging of classic epic narratives
and frankly, you can't get more classic or epic than The
Ramayana and the Bible (The
Gospel According to Mark).
A French double bill seemed to me to be an attempt on the part of the
company to explore new territory and expand beyond its devoted niche
audience (among which I am proud to count myself). Not that picking
scripts by the relatively obscure (at least in a Singapore context)
French writer Rene de Obaldia (Two Women for One Ghost) and
the only slightly-more-famous but equally French and arty Marguerite
Duras (La Musica) was going to bring in a mainstream audience
braying for a Hollywood blockbuster. Still, these were more intimate
and contemporary pieces than World-in-Theatre's usual fare: the first
was a three-hander about a wife meeting her husband's mistress for the
first time, and the second was a two-hander about a couple meeting one
final time in the hotel where they used to stay before their divorce
is finalised.
Sadly, things just didn't quite fall into place.
The script for Two Women for One Ghost was not without potential.
There was opportunity for farce, especially when the husband returned
to his apartment as a ghost just as his wife and mistress were meeting
for the first time, but this was not a genre that World-in-Theatre had
explored before and their inexperience showed. The timing of the actors,
being too slow and measured, was out of sync with the rhythm of the
script, and the fussy, over-the-top ghost (actor/director Sonny Lim)
seemed to be in a completely different play altogether. This disconnect
unfortunately caused this comedy to be seriously unfunny.
It was not helped by actors who fluffed their lines. Priyalatha Arun,
in particular, often seemed unsure of herself when speaking and moving.
Relative newcomer Celine Ng did show promise, comfortably inhabiting
her character in a few places, but generally, she also seemed under-rehearsed.
I applaud the company for taking the risk of trying something different,
but precisely because this static, almost claustrophobic piece was a
new experience for them, they needed to put in more work in both the
acting and the direction to give it the confidence and clockwork timing
it needed.
More creative blocking and set and lighting designs would not have
gone amiss either. This is not a case of undermining the integrity of
the script by asking for a glitter ball and having the wife and mistress
suddenly doing a raunchy dance number with a harem of well-oiled young
male dancers. It is recognising that being true to the script means
helping to flesh out all of its potential through the wide theatrical
arsenal available. If you are not going to use this arsenal for optimum
effect, why not just ask the audience to read the text? Just because
the masks and costumes have been put away, it does not mean that the
company has to strip its productions of all colour and texture.
This was true of the second piece, La Musica, as well. The
script itself, while overlong and much too text-heavy, was not without
moments of great poignancy and poetry. But nearly 90 minutes of two
people sitting in a darkened room together talking about their marriage
needed more than just having two people sitting in a darkened room together
talking about their marriage. Ferlin Jayatissa and Debra Teng put a
lot of heart into the performance and captured the aching sadness of
a marriage as the last few grains of sand slipped slowly through the
couple's hands but that was all they gave - just wave after wave of
sadness. I found it hard to care for the couple or invest in them emotionally
because, for me, they were shadows rather than fully fleshed-out characters.
Perhaps this was a conscious decision on the part of director Chris
Cheers to bring out the stillness and stark quality of the piece, but
while it could have been powerful within a tight 30 minutes, it became
meandering and repetitive when it went on for as long as it did with
nothing else to support it.
The fact is that entirely text-driven pieces can work - Alan Bennett's
Talking Heads springs to mind. It helps that Talking Heads
features engaging and charismatic characters in interesting situations,
but a large part of whether a production of it works is ultimately down
to what the actors and director can bring to the script in its translation
to the stage.
Where World-in-Theatre goes from here, I'm not sure. I hope that if
it continues to stage more contemporary scripts, it chooses them wisely
and explores more fully the possibilities inherent in them. Cheers has
previously succeeded in incorporating the strengths of the company's
aesthetic into a relatively contemporary play (he did so in Equus
for parent company Asia-in-Theatre Research Centre back in 2000), so
it will be interesting to see what the future will bring.
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"Just because the masks and costumes have been put away, it does
not mean that the company has to strip its productions of all colour
and texture"
Credits
Directors: Chris Cheers and Sonny Lim
Assistant Director: Ferlin Jayatissa
Set Design: Chris Cheers and Ferlin Jayatissa
Lighting Design: Chris Cheers
Sound Design: Paul Falzon
Graphic Design: Chan Man Loon
Costume Design: Shan Vayu
Costume Production: Radiah Aljunied
Cast: Priya Arun, Celine Tan, Sonny Lim, Debra Teng,
Ferlin Jayatissa and Sulabha Menon
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