Buttons In The Bread

Event: “Hansel & Gretel”  presented by Players Theatre, as part of Gateway Theatre’s Opening Festival
Venue: Gateway Theatre
Run: 30 June – 2 July, 7 – 9 July 2017
Directed by: Carina Hales
Cast: Lian Sutton (Hansel), Carina Hales (Gretel), Kimberly Chan, James Shubert

Would you believe an ugly crow or a cutesy bunny? What about a talking gingerbread man who entices you to eat him? The house of candy in the middle of the forest?

”Things do not always appear the way they seem to be”

This was the message that reiterated through the play.

One of the main events for Gateway Theatre’s Opening Festival, this familiar Brothers Grimm tale of a pair of siblings who meets a children-eating candy house witch is not new to us. The Players Theatre had also staged this last year.

With a small cast of 4 pax, the actors switched around roles (except for Hansel & Gretel), playing the crow, the father, stepmother, bunnies, gingerbread man and of course the witch. Did I miss out any? Lian was convincing as the brash and silly brother, who does not see beyond what’s in front of him, often leading them into most of their tricky situation. In contrast, Carina endears us to her Gretel, the sensible and kind sister who garners the goodwill of Gingerbread Man, who was crucial in helping the siblings. Kimberley and James displayed versatility with their roles, especially when portraying the non-human characters with different voices, tones and accents. However, I did find their voices a little muffled when they were working the puppets, hence I could not really catch what they were saying at some points.

There was some audience participation when the siblings asked about the next steps they should take, but guess the audience were not as responsive in my crowd. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop the cast from delivering a good performance energetically.

With quick-changing sets and an animated cast, this family-friendly production proved to bring through the message that one should not always perceive things at face value. It applies to adults too, with the example of the father being hoodwinked by his 2nd wife. Good thing was all’s well that ends well and the father reunited with the children, and the woods was no longer a fearful place. Besides that, the kids still get to enjoy candylicious treats courtesy of G-man.

This show is part of Gateway Theatre’s Opening Festival, a new theatre in the heart of Bukit Merah. To find out more about the festival that runs from 7-9 July, check out https://theatre.gateway.sg/.

I also happened to have the privilege to watch the sand art performance of the story of Bukit Merah as part of the official opening ceremony. The story will be told in another manner in Attack of the Swordfish by Act 3 Theatrics.

Event: “Geng Rebut Cabinet” by Teater Ekamatra
Venue: Flexible Performance Space @ LASALLE College of the Arts
Run: 9th – 13th Dec 2015

Inside Out

Teater Ekamatra’s latest play “Geng Rebut Cabinet”, written by Alfian Sa’at and directed by Mohd Fared Jainal, is a delightful contradiction of sorts.

It’s a play which tackles the often prickly and sensitive subject of racial dynamics in Singapore, but it is easily one of the most hilarious Alfian Sa’at plays I’ve seen.

It is set in a country which in all likelihood refers to Singapore, but the playwright cleverly turns things on its head by portraying Malays as the majority race, with a GRC of the incumbent ruling party having to field a minority Chinese candidate named Catherine Seah (Neo Swee Lin) as part of the General Elections requirement.

It is election season and tensions are running high, and the five-member Chai-Chee Commonwealth GRC team holds a meeting to discuss campaign strategy, led by its charismatic leader Roslan Jantan (Khairudin Samsudin).

There is the amiable, grassroots-active team secretary Zainab Halim (Dalifah Shahril), the not-uncommonly-seen army general fresh out of the armed forces and parachuted straight into politics Bukhari Ghazali (Fir Rahman), the successful big shot lawyer Maisarah Hamdan (Farah Ong), and of course, the token Chinese minority candidate Catherine Seah, a Chinese teacher.

At the onset, Catherine’s exuberance is regarded as nothing more than mere amusement for the rest of the team, and her eagerness to not only contribute but make a significant impact on the campaign is dismissed as sheer idealism, nothing more.

After all, her role as minority candidate is merely to fulfill the GRC requirement and keep her segment of Chinese voters happy.

However, as the campaign rallies begin and Catherine starts to deviate from the script and champion for equal rights for minorities and at the same time speaking out against majority privilege, the rest of the team realise that they have a crisis on their hands and close ranks to clamp down on this errant minority voice.

“Geng Rebut Cabinet” uses inverted reality to scintillating effect, and the pointed awkwardness of the inversion allows the play to make its points that much more effectively.

A Malay general? Hardly any Chinese fighter pilots in the air force? The Chinese population often struggling to keep up with their counterparts academically?

Its combination of near-absurd humour together with harsh irony make it so compelling, and its two-hour duration seems to fly by in an instant.

The play is also elevated greatly by the strong cast of five, with Neo Swee Lin playing it relatively straight while the rest of the cast, with Khairudin Samsudin in particular, giving riveting, offbeat performances.

Ultimately, Catherine Seah manages to somehow exceed expectations and help her GRC score the second best result in the entire General Election, but just when she thinks she is starting to gain any form of political traction, she ironically gets “silenced” by being designated the role of Speaker of Parliament, the first woman to be given the role, and a minority member at that.

This being election year, Alfian Sa’at manages to recapitulate some of the salient political talking points, such as the redrawing of election boundaries, the way the incumbent party attacks the credibility of the opposition, and the internal workings of the incumbent party political mechanism.

At the same time, he raises many difficult questions about race in Singapore, some of which might not come as too out-of-the-blue if you have been following his Facebook page musings for some time.

In the playwright’s own words: “I have never thought of race as a ‘sensitive topic’. To me, race is sensitive only when we lack a language to talk about it.”

And in “Geng Rebut Cabinet”, he has certainly given us a medium to talk more about it.

Event: Peter Brook’s “Battlefield” presented by the Singapore Repertory Theatre
Venue: Capitol Theatre
Run: 17th – 21st Nov 2015

War and Peace

Legendary director Peter Brook revisits one of his seminal productions, the epic nine-hour staging of “The Mahabharata” 30 years ago, but this time in the form of a condensed 70-minute epilogue focusing on the epic battle at the end of the revered Sanskrit text.

The production first opened in the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, Peter Brook’s long-time theatre home, and made its international premiere here at our Capitol Theatre, after which it will travel to London, Sydney and Tokyo.

While The Mahabharata is a sweeping epic of over 74,000 distinct verses, making it one of the longest poems in the world, “Battlefield”, adapted and directed by both Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne, tells of the blind King Dhritarashtra, who cedes power to his eldest son Yudhishthira in light of the aftermath of a great war.

The war has been won, but as the family begins to count its cost, it begins to realise that victory seems to bears the bitter taste of defeat.

How much have they really achieved?

And at what cost?

The stage is a startlingly bare one, with nothing more than a few sticks in the background, while musician Toshi Tsuchitori plays a lone drum which serves as soundscape throughout the entire play.

We are introduced to the old King Dhritarashtra (Sean O’Callaghan) and his wife (Carole Karemera), their son Yudhishthira (Jared McNeill), and the wise adviser Krishna (Ery Nzaramba).

Along the way, short fables are intertwined into the proceedings, telling of anecdotes involving a pigeon and falcon, a worm, a mongoose, and the like.

The fables are at times quirky and at times unsettling, adding great colour to the script.

The plot is essentially a very straightforward one, with the bare, stripped-down staging challenging the viewer to focus on the purity of the actors’ delivery of their lines.

Toshi Tsuchitori controls the pacing and tension in the play expertly with the beat of his drum, although I felt the extraordinarily bright “Exit” signs on each side of the Capitol Theatre stage served to diffuse the viewer’s visual focus considerably, thus taking away from the intense nature of the proceedings.

Perhaps the DBS Arts Centre – the spiritual home of the SRT – might have been a better choice of venue for this production, although it definitely would not have been able to accommodate as many people.

While director Brook coaxed out immense performances from the cast of four, Ery Nzaramba managed to stand out for his effervescence and versatility.

“Battlefield” is ultimately a sombre meditation on the atrocities of war and finding inner peace within one’s self in light of the sense of pain and loss.

In many ways it reminds me of “The Spirits Play” staged by The Finger Players just two weeks ago, Kuo Pao Kun’s take on the unbearable horrors of war and the profound impact it has on all the survivors.

“Battlefield” is a true testament to the power of theatre, and it is remarkable what magic can be achieved by just four actors, a solo musician, deft directing, and a powerful script.