Although
a regular at World-in-Theatre productions, I felt that the company's
last performance, Two
Women for One Ghost and La Musica, was rather lifeless
and dull. It was arguably a bold attempt to try something more naturalistic
and minimalist but the company's strength, to me, had always been the
way it brought spectacle to the stage such that it invigorated the senses
and captivated the imagination (The
Gospel According To Mark, The
Royal Hunt of the Sun). In Bitter Chocolate, another
low-key and intimate production about ordinary people and their everyday
lives, magnetic performances by World-in-Theatre founder Sonny Lim and
dancers Kavitha Krishnan, Huang Yuzhu and Shanti Gomes riveted me but,
unfortunately, these did not entirely compensate for the many pieces
that made up the show which still left me cold.
I liked the way elements of different art forms were infused into this
anthology of work, most of which explored the richness of life and how
it could be both bitter and sweet, sometimes at the same time. The seven
pieces (produced in collaboration with Apsara Asia, a relatively young
performing arts company focusing on cultural dance) were mostly dance
performances or dramatic monologues but light touches of poetry, live
music, visual art and multimedia were also used to colour the works.
Against the backdrop of a bare set, there was creative use of space
and lighting. In one striking scene in Urban Requiem, dancer
Juraimy Abu Bakar was lying on the floor struggling against the boundaries
of the square of light within which he was framed. At the same time,
this image was projected live onto the backdrop. His private plight
of feeling trapped by modern life was essentially now being displayed
as entertainment for the whole world to see.
Through the use of such powerful theatricality, each piece certainly
opened with promise. There was always something slightly different or
stirring to the senses. But this promise, sadly, was often not lived
up to. If Bitter Chocolate were to be seen as an exploratory
work-in-progress or simply a showcase of performance skills, it was
interesting enough but I felt that the pieces did not come together
well and many of them needed much more thought in the presentation of
what were otherwise solid conceptual ideas.
Magic Shoes deals with a young man in the prime of his life
who is paralysed in a hospital bed but, in his mind, is free to travel
the world of his imagination. There is a twist at the end to imply that
the young man is also mentally disturbed and that the innocent and sweet
tales of adventures that he has been acting out both in his mind and
for us may have been even more of a dream than we had thought - it may
have been our own sentimentalisation. The concept is solid and much
could have been mined from it but writer/performer (and ex-Inkpotter)
Musa Fazal and director Ferlin Jayatissa only skimmed the surface. The
stories he told, for example, which were supposed to be great flights
of the imagination never quite soared as high as I would have liked,
coming across merely as quaint and, more severely, lacking any solid
punchlines. I also felt that the actor and director had over-simplified
the piece, working only on the bare bones to create a caricature rather
than fully delving into the character to explore what it really meant
to be both free and trapped at the same time in this particular way.
I did like Musa Fazal's performance though. It was incredibly over-the-top,
all flailing arms and bulging eyes, but I personally felt that worked
well for the character and proved to be a powerful contrast subsequently
when he was seen at the end in a mental hospital with a glazed look
on his face, unable even to speak or feed himself. His zealous performance
as he recounted fantastical adventures may have turned off some and
certainly made me feel uncomfortable at times because it was so in my
face but I felt that the risk that paid off.
Strong performances in Vow were similarly let down by the
script. The piece started off well with a nicely choreographed dance
piece by Sonny Lim and Huang Yuzhu and was held together by a thoughtful
and nuanced performance from Sonny Lim as a wheelchair-bound man who
eventually reveals that he had murdered the woman he loved. As the entire
text was delivered as a voice-over and Lim was confined to a wheelchair,
he was able to concentrate entirely on his facial expression and this
he did to marvellous effect. You could literally see the wheels turning
in his mind as he recounted his story. A glance here, a slight smile
there - these revealed his true emotions and thoughts in a subtle yet
powerful way. The script itself, however, was functional at best and
clichéd at worst. It meandered without impact or direction and
did not fully flesh out the character or his circumstances. Having said
this, this script was still more successful than that of the third of
the dramatic pieces, the flat and really rather pointless The Lost
Cradle, scenes of which were interwoven between some of the other
six pieces. Actors Elizabeth Tan and Philip Marcelo attempted in vain
to bring to life the story of a man at the grave of his mother who had
abandoned him as a child. There was hardly any emotional energy in the
script for them to work with and whatever little there was was dissipated
when spread over so many smaller segments anyway. Marcelo in particular
seemed disengaged from his character, playing things very quietly, and
while that might have been a conscious choice by the actor and director,
it made him come across as bland and uninteresting.
I've been focusing a lot on the dramatic pieces because that is the
area I am more familiar with as a theatre (and not dance) reviewer;
but it was, in fact, two of the four dance pieces that I felt were the
most entertaining of the entire evening. Echoed Words was about
a woman (Huang Yuzhu) with a speech impairment who playfully "converses"
with an Indian classical dancer (Kavitha Krishnan) who, like her, also
communicates with her hands. The movements were intricate and graceful
but, more importantly, infused with so much humanity, beauty and dignity.
The charismatic dancers were so clearly in the moment that their faces
practically beamed with the light of sheer joy throughout the performance,
and I literally could not tear my eyes off either dancer, despite the
simplicity of the work.
The sombre Darkened Paths, meanwhile, was a more conventional
dance piece, drawing mostly from what I would guess are ballet influences,
but, again, it was the strong performance of one of the dancers, in
this case, Shanti Gomes, which essentially won me over. Her character
was a woman, who, like her husband, was trapped in a relationship that
she could not see her way out of. This was illustrated in Gomes and
partner Max Chen's tight, angular movements which were fraught with
metaphorical stress and conflict - but it was the fixed look on Gomes'
face, so numb and desperately full of sadness and loss, that really
spoke volumes. The pair occasionally bumped into each other unintentionally
and, strangely enough, I felt that this also added to the performance
rather than detracting from it because of the humanity it gave to the
piece.
The other two dance pieces I found less to my liking even if they
showed as much heart and skill as the rest. Stranger to Stranger
was an angry and, worse, repetitive, rant by Max Chen and an agile Khairul
Shahrin while the angsty Urban Requiem had its moments of visual
impact (especially when Juraimy Abu Bakar's muscular performance was
complemented by an additional trio of dancers with lighter moves) but,
in the end, was not particularly memorable and did not have anything
particularly interesting to say about the theme of modern life either.
This was not helped by the fact that the poem by Cyril Wong on which
the piece was based was muffled over the speakers such that you could
not really make out the words.
In this and its most recent work, World-in-Theatre seems to be trying
to take stories about the mundane and ordinary and inject the extraordinary
(or theatrical) into them. However, I feel the the company's strength
is the reverse: taking the extraordinary - heightened emotion and theatrics,
myth and legend - and making it human and accessible to an ordinary
audience. Whether a company should stick to its strengths or keep trying
to explore new territory remains, of course, endlessly debatable and
when it comes to art, "should" is an especially slippery concept.
Nonetheless I remain concerned that World-in-Theatre is losing its distinctive
quality as I would not have been able to tell from the production alone
that Bitter Chocolate was being presented by World-in-Theatre.
However, I will certainly continue to support World-in-Theatre as an
audience member because I feel there were indeed moments of great success
in Bitter Chocolate and that this production represents an
upswing after Two
Women for One Ghost and La Musica.
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"It was interesting enough but I felt that the pieces did not come
together well and many of them needed much more thought in the presentation
of what were otherwise solid conceptual ideas"
Credits
Producer: Kavitha Krishnan
Directors: Kavitha Krishnan and Juraimy Abu Bakar
Production Manager: Imran Manaff
Movement Choreographers and Directors: Juraimy Abu
Bakar and Kavitha Krishnan
Theatre Facilitators: Sonny Lim, Juraimy Abu Bakar
and Ferlin Jayatissa
Script/Text: Musa Fazal, Cyril Wong and Sonny Lim
Poems/Phrases: Cyril Wong and Ferlin Jayatissa
Music Composer: Ng Tian Hui
Lighting Designer: Iskander Abori
Multi-Media and Graphic Designer: Chris Cheers
Sound Designer and Music Editor: Imran Manaff
Musicians: Sam Anbarasan Eva, Lin Chun-Yi, Lee Hou
Koon, Lee Cher Farn, Tow Huifen, Juraimy Abu Bakar and Ryan Esguerra
Lim Lee
Cast: Ferlin Jayatissa, Huang Yuzhu, Juraimy Abu Bakar,
Kavitha Krishnan, Khairul Shahrin, Max Chen, Musa Fazal, Philip Marcelo,
Shanti Gomes, Elizabeth Tan and Sonny Lim
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