Buttons In The Bread

Event: “Jonathan, David & Me” by Our Company
Venue: Drama Centre Black Box
Run: 14th – 18th Oct ’15

The Bro Code

Our Company tackles the oft-overlooked theme of male friendships in this intimate little play involving three male friends – David (Jamie Shawn Tan), Mervyn (KS Yeo) and Jonathan (Vignesh Singh).

It covers their journey through life from their carefree JC days taking part in the annual talentime contest, to the various stages of their relationships more than a decade on.

David is the boisterous, affable chap who eventually cheats on his girlfriend of more than ten years with a young intern, while Jonathan is the quiet, sensitive one who remains single most of his young adult life, all while harbouring unrequited feelings for David’s girlfriend all this time.

Mervyn is the most level-headed of the three, often playing peacemaker to the other two, but who is not exempt from his own share of relationship woes.

The plot is a fairly predictable one with hardly any surprises, although playwright-director Luke Kwek does a good job embedding two tales of epic male friendships into the fabric of the storyline – one of the biblical story of David and Jonathan, and the other of the ancient Mesopotamian account of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

The banter in the play, ridden with expletives and coarse allusions to sex, came across as realistic and believable, and is expected of the kind of dialogue heard when a bunch of pals come together for a good time.

There is also the illustration of brotherly tough love, in how Jonathan and Mervyn chastise David for his cheating ways and plead with him to end his affair.

While the eagerness of the three actors was clearly palpable, it was KS Yeo who is probably the most proficient of the three, while Jamie Shawn Tan seemed unable to emote rage convincingly enough, and Vignesh seemed a bit too lightweight in his role.

Nonetheless, the beauty in the play is that it does take you on a full dramatic arc through the friendship of all three buddies, testing the limits of their relationships and stretching things to breaking point, before finally coming to a somewhat bittersweet resolution.

Male friendships are often a funny thing, and “Jonathan, David & Me” does an admirable job in bringing out the complexities and intricacies beneath what often seems like a fairly uncomplicated veneer amongst men.

It makes you take stock of your own personal friendships, and appreciate the fact that when you’re at your lowest, your best friends are gonna be the ones that save you.

(Picture courtesy of Pangdemonium!)

Event: “Chinglish” presented by Pangdemonium
Venue: Drama Centre Theatre
Run: 9th – 25th Oct 2015

A Closer Look, Will Funny

Although “Chinglish” is the final production in Pangdemonium’s “Transformation Trilogy” 2015 season, it certainly represents a first for the company in a number of respects.

It’s the first bilingual play they’ve ever put up, it features TV personality Guo Liang in his theatrical debut, and it’s probably also the first time you’ll see Matt Grey speaking Mandarin on stage (and a whole lot of it at that!).

“Chinglish” is a 2011 play written by David Henry Hwang, who famously wrote the Tony Award-winning play “M. Butterfly”, and tells of the adventures of an American sign-making businessman Daniel Cavanaugh (Daniel Jenkins) as he attempts to forge deals in the Far East, knowing next to nothing of the Chinese language, and much less so of the mystical concept of “guanxi”.

Along the way he teams up with a “consultant” (Matt Grey) – an Englishman who has been living in China for many years and has an admirable grasp of the Chinese language – to advise him accordingly and help him pull the necessary strings in order to secure a favourable business appointment with the Minister of Culture (Adrian Pang).

There is also the struggling translator aide Audrey Luo, who has a penchant for making hilarious literal translations from Chinese to English and vice versa, thus providing the bulk of the show’s laughs, as well as the sultry Vice Minister (Oon Shu An), a key ally of Daniel who eventually finds herself tangled in a prickly web of lust with him.

The charm of the show lies in the premise of having a Westerner thrown right in the thick of a fairly small, insignificant province in China, and seeing him fumble his way around the completely unfamiliar language and culture of the land, as well as the many “lost in translation” jokes that the playwright cleverly constructs when the characters attempt to translate from one language to the other.

Incidentally, it is especially in a country like Singapore, where most people are fairly familiar with both English and Chinese, that this play works particularly well, as the audience is able to grasp the subtlety in the phrases of both languages and laugh at the occasional absurdity of literal translations.

Pangdemonium has assembled yet another particularly stellar cast for this production, with Daniel Jenkins and Oon Shu An ably carrying the bulk of the load, while Matt Grey blows everyone’s socks off with the considerable fluency of his Mandarin, what with the many lines he was tasked with.

Audrey Luo was perhaps underused playing the various translator aides which mainly served as comic relief, but boy did she milk the laughs whenever she came on.

Adrian Pang does the best with the rather thinly fleshed-out role he was given, while one wonders why it was necessary to cast Guo Liang in this production.

Not that Guo Liang didn’t do a good job – he played Judge Xu Geming as well as anyone could have asked for – but it just puzzles me why a TV personality was specially chosen to play this particular role in the play.

The set design by Eucien Chia – probably one of the more beautiful ones I’ve seen in awhile – was both a revolving platform as well as a tastefully-designed backdrop which suggests the shape of a Chinese pagoda.

Of the many backdrops I’ve seen, this one is easily one of the most memorable.

“Chinglish” attempts to bring out the complexities of doing business in China, with the potential pitfalls that come with it, and while it it succeeds in creating moments of entertaining comedy, it seldom goes beneath the surface of what seems to resemble a light-hearted farce.

The pace of the play does tend to sag at times, especially in the second act, and at times you wonder where all this is heading.

Nonetheless, despite my quibbles with the plodding script, “Chinglish” remains a fairly entertaining romp through the sometimes wild and zany world that is business in China.

It guarantees a laugh, and it makes you smile, but like a decently-translated phrase, it sometimes fails to go beyond the superficial and articulate its deeper meaning and subtlety.

Event: “Pull Up” by One Man Riot Productions
Venue: Goodman Arts Centre Black Box
Run: 2nd – 5th Sept 2015

The Danger Zone

The tragic and mysterious events of last year’s MH370 disappearance still continue to puzzle laypersons and civil aviation experts alike, and it is on this very topic that One Man Riot has chosen to stage their debut production.

Written by playwright Thomas Lim, and directed by both Thomas and Nur Khairina, the play is set in the humble confines of the Goodman Arts Centre Black Box.

The company is, after all, a fairly new one with limited resources, and even in its programme booklet it acknowledges that it is “not one of the big boys”, and it “probably will never have big budgets and expensive sets”.

Nonetheless, the production team makes the most of what it has, and you can see that extra effort was made to create as authentic an experience as possible, from the delightful show tickets resembling boarding passes, the well printed programme booklets, the “air steward” and “air stewardess” ushering the audience into their seats, and the simple set of two rows of small lights on the floor which immediately remind you of an airport runway.

The term “pull up” in aviation parlance (I had to look this up) refers to an abort of a landing attempt at a very low altitude, close to the runway, while the play “Pull Up” tells the story of commercial pilot Captain Lim Zhi Wei (Milon Goh) and the events which led to his decision to crash a plane full of passengers.

There is also Captain Teo Wei Xuan (Zenda Tan), a former cadet trainee with Captain Lim back in flight school, who no longer flies but has to struggle to handle the media from the ground as the airline’s main spokesperson.

To make matters worse for her, Captain Lim actually makes a final phonecall to her to say his last words just before he crashes the plane, and this fact is uncovered by Investigator Chong (Mitchell Fang), whose job is to make sense of the entire tragedy.

It is later revealed that Captain Lim, Captain Teo and another cadet trainee by the name of Captain Goh Wee Keong (Wee Xuan Yi) used to be buddies in flight school, but an accident on their final training exercise together led to Captain Goh crashing his plane fatally.

This death hit Captain Lim particularly hard, and he has never been able to come to terms with the death of his close buddy.

Playwright Thomas Lim shows great familiarity with the intricacies and terminology of aviation, as is evident from the very realistic cockpit scenes depicting taking off and cruising at altitude, as well as the scene depicting the final flying exercise between the three cadets.

The production team also employs clever use of replica models to recreate the flight paths of the three planes during the final exercise.

While the play never makes any explicit mention of Malaysia Airlines (it creates a fictitious airline called “Straits Air” instead), it is fairly apparent to anyone viewing it that the entire story is a nod to what happened with MH370 last year, and offers a possible answer to how and why things might have occurred.

Mitchell Fang is particularly outstanding as the tenacious investigator with a sensitive side, while Zenda Tan represents the emotional core of the play in trying to bravely soldier on with her professional duty, yet both carrying a torch for Captain Lim all these years and knowing the full extent of his trauma at having had to deal with the loss of his best friend.

What started out as 15-minute play for a secondary school has eventually morphed into a full-length play, and it’s truly heartening to see One Man Riot come up with such an enlightening piece as their debut production.

It is never easy to put up a play of any scale, and the team can take great encouragement to see their debut piece as well as their theatrical aspirations finally take flight.