I wasn't
sure what to expect as I made my way to the Telok Ayer Performing Arts
Centre. I had not heard of Underground Theatre before, the company having
only just been set up last year. However, I had become a fan of Rei
Poh after seeing him in Drama Box's Trick
or Threat and the publicity for Foreplay sounded innocuous
enough: four amusing short plays laced with black humour. If nothing
else, I figured, Foreplay would at least be short - the running
time was, after all, only just over an hour. I wasn't sure if I would
necessarily want to commit to a review of the show though so I paid
my own way but let me tell you, that it was $10 certainly well spent.
Mind you, the evening did not actually start off on the right note.
Entering the cramped and poorly-ventilated black box, I was overwhelmed
by the incessant haze from a smoke machine (which, oddly, was never
actually used in the context of any of the plays so I have no idea why
it was there at all) and the fact that the house music consisted of
literally one track being played over and over again - I must have heard
White Rabbit about six times in a row before Foreplay
began! All my fears about small, experimental productions began rearing
their ugly heads...
Thankfully, the show itself was much more amiable right from the opening
piece, Fat, a conversation between to girls, one of whom (Joanne
Ng) goes off on an extended rant about the trials of being fat while
her hapless friend (Dew M. Chaiyanara) listens blithely. The text was
a little too insistent and threatened at times to be caught in too much
repetition even for a ten-minute play but, for the most part, Fat
worked nicely: there were some moments, drawn from painfully authentic
situations, that were genuinely funny and occasionally quite moving
and both actresses turned in sincere and likeable performances.
I particularly liked how the piece ended, with the girl's friend finally
screaming, "I hate you!", not, one suspects because the girl is fat,
but because the girl can't shut up about it. The ending works because
its message is hinted at rather than being explicitly stated. Dew who
wrote all four plays does this in a couple of her other pieces as well
and both Goodnight and Taxi benefit from this confidence
in her storytelling and actors. In Goodnight, for example,
an unreasonable wife (Ng) talks incessantly to her husband (Rei Poh)
so that he cannot sleep and it is only at the end, when she suddenly
vanishes and the man, alone, begins to cry quietly into his pillow that
we realize that she was probably only a figment of his imagination,
a wife perhaps little appreciated at the time but now lost, who had
been pulled back into existence by his memory. In Taxi, a couple
(Ng and Poh) can't get a cab despite their best efforts and never understand
why although the audience can guess the reason from the fact that they
are both dressed in white, with skid marks across their chests, and
are stuck in a cemetery.
As a playwright, Dew demonstrates various strengths consistently across
the four ten-minute (or so) plays: her narrative ideas are simple but
engaging, she has a good ear for dialogue and she is able to set up
very funny lines and set pieces. Her dialogue can lack variety in content
and this was especially noticeable as all the plays were two-handers
but the tightness and steadiness of her writing make up for that. She
has a very clear grasp of the fundamentals of a short plays: there is
nothing particularly inspired or innovative in her work but there is
nothing self-indulgent, pretentious or flaccid about it either.
Similarly, the direction of the four plays (Sugiman Rahmat directed
Fat while Dew directed Goodnight, The Reunion
and Taxi herself) possessed a solidity which got the job done
without much fuss. There were some creative blocking decisions in Fat
and Taxi that added some colour to the proceedings but essentially,
this was directing straight out of the textbook and no worse for it.
The sets and costumes stood out for me as they showed creativity, thought
and effort despite what I assume was a relatively small budget but where
I think the plays were let down, however was in the lighting: regardless
of whether it was needed or anyone was in it, a hard-edged, pale blue
spot pointed vertically down at the centre of the stage at all times.
This was as inexplicable a decision as the repetitive house music and
the constant tendrils of smoke. Clearly, someone in Underground Theatre
needs to sit down and have a think about what sound, lighting and special
effects are actually for.
In terms of the acting, Ng, who appeared in all four of the plays impressed
the most. She did not have much transition time to take on her different
roles but she nonetheless appeared transformed in each - kudos to the
costume and make-up team as well for their speedy work! She went from
being an ordinary, girl next door in Fat to psycho-bimbo in
Goodnight, and then from mousy in The Reunion to feisty
in Taxi, calibrating each change just right. She stumbled in
the denouement of The Reunion when her stinging comeback to
an uppity old friend (a rather miscast Dew) lacked the required venom
but otherwise, her performances always gave the plays the energy they
needed. Poh is, as always, enjoyable to watch. He has a casualness about
him that is attractive and he had good chemistry with Ng. I preferred
him in Threat though because he did struggle a little here
with the cadence and rhythms of Dew's writing whereas he seemed more
in his element with the distinctively Singaporean accent of Threat.
All in all, Foreplay was a satisfying evening and I certainly
look forward to seeing more of Dew's work. She shows potential and I
am eager to see what will happen if she pushes herself harder and tries
to take her writing and directing to the next level. A little more ambition,
imagination and flair and Dew could find herself creating not only a
good piece of theatre but a great one.
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"Writer Dew demonstrates various strengths consistently: her narrative
ideas are simple but engaging, she has a good ear for dialogue and she
is able to set up very funny lines and set pieces"
Credits
Playwright: Dew M. Chaiyanara
Directors: Dew M. Chaiyanara and Sugiman Rahmat
Actors: Joanne Ng, Rei Poh and Dew M. Chaiyanara
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