Buttons In The Bread

Event: “City Night Songs” by Checkpoint Theatre and NUS Stage (as part of the NUS Arts Festival 2012)
Venue: UCC Theatre
Run: 10th – 11th Mar 2012

Because The Night Belongs To Lovers

The very notion of nightfall lends itself well to thoughts and expressions of the poetic nature, and being a lover of the night myself, I attended “City Nights Songs” with eager anticipation.

It didn’t help that the online buzz on Twitter and Facebook after opening night last night was rather enthusiastic, which made me even more excited to watch it, although the only caveat that kept popping up was that the show was too lengthy.

This production is a collaboration between Checkpoint Theatre and NUS Stage, and I love how theatre professionals have been given the opportunity to work with talented young students and vice versa.

It is directed by Huzir Sulaiman, while the script and songs are a collaborative effort by the entire cast, consisting of Gani Abdul Karim, Oon Shu An, Nessa Anwar, Judy Au, Nishant Jalgaonkar, Ivan Surya Tjahyo, and Joel Tan.

I liked that the programme booklet to “City Night Songs” was rather informative, and that it had included the all-important song list, which is the one bit of crucial information that I always turn to in a, uh, “musical” such as this (more on this point a little later).

One minor gripe I had with the “Sing to the Dawn” programme booklet was that it didn’t mention anything about the titles of the songs, which made it extremely difficult to keep track of the songs.

I know this might seem like petty semantics, but I would prefer to classify “City Night Songs” as a play with songs (hence my classification of this review under the “plays” category), rather than a full-fledged musical, even though its run-time of 2 hours 45 mins rivals even that of most Broadway musicals.

It is essentially a weaving together of different life stories affecting 7 friends as they negotiate their way through the treacherous landscape of urban city life.

Even though the songs portray the emotions of the characters rather well, you’d find that they aren’t actually fully integrated into the fabric of the play, and tend to be performed as short scenes on their own.

I liked the opening scene, which saw the entire ensemble coming out and performing the musical number “Voices Call Me Home” as a 7-piece band.

It showcased the varied musical abilities of the cast, as we see that Joel Tan plays the piano really well (not to mention the trumpet and trombone in subsequent songs), Gani does percussions, Nishant plays guitar, Ivan plays bass, and so on.

I thought “Voices Call Me Home” had this slight spiritual quality to it, almost like how “Circle of Life” works for the opening of “The Lion King”.

Musically, I thought the cast did rather well for the number “Warna-Warni”, which to me was the best-performed number by the ensemble, and which incidentally also garnered the strongest reception.

Sadly, the musical execution was generally found wanting for many of the songs, and I am fully aware that we obviously have to take into account the fact that the performers are all actors first, musicians second.

However – and I don’t know if I’m alone in thinking this way – I felt that there were points in which the poor musical execution actually detracted from the appreciation of the song, and to a larger extent, the play.

It was a distraction that was just too jarring to ignore.

The main issue was synchronisation between the various instruments, and while I do not wish to pinpoint any specific instruments, I would point out that the songs “If God Wants Me To Love Him” and “By My Side” were especially problematic.

“If God Wants Me To Love Him” also suffered from pitch issues, especially in the beginning part of the song, and took awhile to find its feet.

Nonetheless, this was the first time I had ever seen all the actors in a production actually play all the instrumental music to their own songs, and I thought it was a remarkably refreshing experience.

The cast was fortunate, in a way, as it received tremendously warm response from the audience throughout the play, which could partly be explained by the fact that a lot of the audience members were probably fellow NUS mates.

This warm response probably gave the performers the confidence and the motivation to also raise their game on stage, which resulted in the entire production being an extremely engaging experience.

However, this is not to say the playscript itself did not have the quality to match.

I found it incredibly funny when it wanted to be, and achingly poignant when it had to be.

The writing was generally top-notch, and I found “City Night Songs” to be one of the funniest plays I’d seen in awhile.

At times it almost seemed like a pastiche of theatre styles, what with heartfelt, tender moments to expletive-filled rants to comedic banter to exceedingly flowery monologues.

The plot was made up of the various storylines pertaining to the 7 characters, chronicling their search for friendship, love and meaning…something like an extended episode of “Friends” if you will.

There wasn’t anything especially complex about the plotlines.

They were largely simple and rather predictable, and ultimately, given the relative thinness of the plotlines, it didn’t feel to me like the play would have warranted the run-time of 2 hours 45 mins.

Yes, I do agree that the play’s duration could perhaps have been shortened.

If not for the fact that the performers were playing in front of a raucous home crowd, I wonder if the audience would not have felt it to be too draggy.

I enjoyed the performance of Judy Au very much, in the way she was able to demonstrate a range of acting ability.

Her Hong Kong impersonations were spot-on, and her comedic persona was unbearably funny, at times reminding me very much of Zooey Deschanel’s character from “500 Days of Summer”.

Joel Tan was just as impressive, and there seems to be no end to this young man’s myriad of talents – playwright, actor, musical director, composer, pianist, trumpeter, trombonist, etc.

The final song “The Best We Can Do”, sung by Joel and Shu An, was one of my favourites.

Amongst all the songs in “City Night Songs”, it most resembled a Broadway song in its conception, its lyrics and its melody.

The lyrics were incredibly witty, and the tune somehow made me think of Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” for some strange reason.

According to Huzir Sulaiman, the actual collaborative writing of “City Night Songs” only started 8 weeks ago.

And it just boggles the mind when you think about how much has been accomplished within this span of 8 weeks.

Hats off to the fine young talents of NUS Stage for what they’ve come up with, and to the professionals involved in the production as well for sharing their time and expertise.

I found “City Night Songs” to be extremely refreshing, engaging, and encouraging, and I deeply look forward to watching more of such collaborations in future.

M1 Fringe Fest ended last weekend and with much delay, here’s a short write-up of another play I caught. I wasn’t quite sure what I should make of it.
It had an unconventional structure in its presentation, which in my personal opinion, might not have been the best way.

The gist of it:
As the morgue temperature rises, 4 corpses awake in the midst of waiting for their identification and autopsy. As the temperature falls again (this happens a few times）, they are thrown into dream-like scenarios and each different as the scene jumps.

Starting off in a casual manner to “get the audience involved”, it was on the outset that it was probably meant to be that way, having the actors stroll into the theatre, and even “cuts” called by the director in the ongoing play. However, I found this too disruptive to the play, almost like it was a rehearsal, causing a jarring effect to the flow. I felt it would have been more impactful without those interruptions. Also, due to the many abrupt shifts in characters, it was a bit difficult to find the story behind each one, as it seems only snapshots were taken. Maybe it’s meant to be this way, that dream-like scenario.

The religious theme was apparent, and at times, maybe even “offensive” or viewed as a mockery, inducing, I believe, some of the audience to walk out. Yes, it was a tad uncomfortable at some points, but I wanted to hear them out.
In the post-show dialogue, I found out that the inspiration came from Sean’s religious environment since young and also as a “compilation” of interviews and surveys with people and their views. It was meant to raise questions on what people think about religion, not a personal commentary on the part of both writers. I do wonder why the show was called “Tongues” though? Maybe due to the many voices of people? Or as corpses, there are many questions that you can no longer ask? Anything to do with the Tower of Babel?

One thing I liked about the show was the sound design by Dirk Stromberg. With its “surround” quality, it helped the audience through the scenes and I liked the way it was engineered. I also felt that the repeated scene at the end of “are you there, God?”, where one of the characters seeks answers from God, but doesn’t hear His replies even though He was there replying, was a nice touch. It had a somewhat different quality as compared to the earlier “interrupted” instance; I think the repeat made that poignant touch to the show.

So there, I guess that’s all I have for this show. Just another note, the book (published by Math Paper Press, 2012) was launched last Friday (24 Feb) at BooksActually.

Event: “Cooling Off Day” by W!ld Rice (originally staged in August ’11)
Venue: SOTA Drama Theatre
Run: 23rd Feb – 11th Mar 2012

Relight My Fire

You could say that most of the dust has already settled by now.

It’s funny, but when you think about it, it has actually been less than 10 months since the 2011 General Elections, but a lot of it does seem like quite a distant memory now.

How quickly we forget.

However, W!ld Rice must really thank their lucky stars for the recent shenanigans involving a certain Hougang MP, which paves the way for a likely by-election in the near future, thus bringing a whole new level of relevance and timeliness to “Cooling Off Day” once again.

“Cooling Off Day” was first staged in August last year as part of the Man Singapore Theatre Festival.

I had already done a lengthy review of the initial staging (here), and since it doesn’t seem like too much has been changed in this restaging (apart from the fact that Janice Koh now replaces Tan Kheng Hua), I shan’t dwell too much on the main content of the play itself.

I would, however, like to share some random thoughts I had on watching the play earlier this evening:

– This was my first time visiting the SOTA Drama Theatre, and I was suitably impressed. Slightly smaller than the Drama Centre Theatre from the looks of it, but it had that cosy feel, which I liked. And the interior colour scheme gave it a very vibrant and energetic feel. It’s heartening to know that there has been another good-class theatre added to our local pool of theatre venues. I look forward to attending more shows at this venue.

– Part of “Cooling Off Day’s” charm lies in its heavy use of caricaturism. And credit obviously goes to the six fine actors for making many of the lines much funnier than they would have seemed at first glance.

– Janice Koh is a dead ringer for Tan Kheng Hua. At times the resemblance is almost uncanny, both physically and in their acting style. Wonderful replacement.

– The opening skit still gets me every time. I’m not sure if anyone else out there feels the same, but I just loved every bit of the opening skit where the female student ruminates on why we should simply vote for the opposition and not for the ruling party. Very rational and coherent thoughts from a young girl. I thought this skit was especially notable because it kicks off the show, and yet kind of stumps the viewer for that brief moment because the viewer is probably expecting a show filled with “anti-PAP” rant.

– Nothing unites a theatre crowd quite like anti-PAP rhetoric. Is there such a thing as a PAP-voting theatre-goer? (I’m just kidding.)

– As I said, the 2011 General Election seems like quite a distant memory now, and I got the sense that “Cooling Off Day” helped remind us of some of the finer details of last year which we had almost forgotten about by now. And it also rekindled some of the fire that burned rather brightly in us last year, albeit for an intense few weeks.

– The Mr Brown “Bak Chor Mee” skit just never fails to deliver. As it was back in August last year, it once again brought the house down earlier this evening. Who cares if the Tin Pei Ling gag has been flogged to death? Or the “once every fifty years” line for that matter? This skit was easily the comedic zenith of the entire show.

– Some parts I didn’t understand: Shouldn’t it be “81 out of 87 seats” instead of “81 out of 90 seats” as mentioned by one of the characters in the play? Also, why did Jo Kukathas mention something about those words being said in “1999”, and then saying that that was “20 years ago”? Not trying to nitpick here, but I believe I was not the only one wondering about the same things.

– Again, I didn’t really get the whole “Easterners vs. Westerners” rhetoric which seemed to feature so heavily in the play. Didn’t think it was particularly resonant last August, and don’t think it’s particularly resonant now either.

– The last scene of “Cooling Off Day” is, of course, that highly-memorable and visually-arresting set of 81 white chairs and 6 red chairs all lined up neatly on stage. When I first saw it earlier this evening, my first thought was “Ah, but it’s no longer 6 red chairs!” And true enough, later on after the applause, Neo Swee Lin went to symbolically remove one of the red chairs. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Event: “Singapore” by The Necessary Stage
Venue: Esplanade Theatre Studio
Run: 15th – 19th Feb 2012

First staged during last year’s Singapore Arts Festival, TNS’s rather ambitiously titled offering “Singapore” is a curious one.

It’s hard to put a finger on it really.

I had unfortunately missed last year’s staging, and thus am unable to make any comparisons between that first staging and this current one, but I gathered from the post-show dialogue session that the main differences were the changes made to the final segment of the play.

“Singapore”, starring the likes of Sharon Frese, Najib Soiman, Rodney Oliveiro, Siti Khalijah, Karen Tan, and Sukania Venugopal, consists of three distinct segments – the first being an enactment of William Farquhar’s time in Singapore and his relationship with his wife Nonio, the second being a meta-play about a group of theatre practitioners trying to put together a play about a group of Singaporeans being tasked to rewrite the national pledge, and the last one being a scene where these same practitioners engage in some internal conflict with regards to their little theatre group.

The production started out briskly enough.

There was enough momentum going on in the earlier proceedings that made you think that it would have led to something really great.

The first segment was certainly entertaining, but after awhile you started to ask yourself if there was a real point to be made here at all.

The second segment, which to me was the main focus of the entire production, felt slightly more meaningful.

Humour was largely provided through the abilities of the strong cast and how they executed the various caricatures, be it local or foreign characters, to maximum effect.

Things started to get a bit convoluted once you realised you were watching a meta-play whereby it is actually a play about a group of practitioners rehearsing a play.

The lines between reality and fantasy were well and truly crossed when after the second segment, the actors came forward and pretended to conduct a post-show dialogue, and some members in the audience actually thought it was the real post-show dialogue itself!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as big a fan of TNS as the next guy because I think they put up some of the most wonderful and engaging stuff you can find, but I wonder if they might have dropped the ball on this one.

Probably not their best work.

Yes, the whole “locals vs foreigners” sentiment was brought to the fore once again, at times in such raw and brutal fashion that it made you wince, but apart from that, I came out of the theatre scratching my head trying to grasp the essence of “Singapore” in the way it was presented as a whole.

Plus, the inclusion of the song bits, while highly entertaining, just didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense apart from providing comic relief.

“Singapore” seemed more like a strange mishmash of ideas, of styles, and of dynamics.

And in the same way Singapore the nation is a mishmash of all of the above, I’m not sure if it has necessarily led to desirable results.

P.S. On a completely separate note altogether, I’m thankful to TNS for featuring the Carpenters song “I Won’t Last A Day Without You”, sung by Siti in the first segment, purely from a self-interest standpoint. It’s a wonderful song which I had not previously been familiar with, but am now liking very much. Thanks guys!