Buttons In The Bread

Caught the show 李大傻 at Drama Centre yesterday. I had actually expected it to be a jovial show, but it turned out to be more serious than jovial.

The play was about the legendary Cantonese story-teller Lei Dai Soh (actually I think it should be Lei Dai Sor/Sau) of Singapore broadcasted on radio/丽的呼声 (Rediffusion). His real name is Lee Fok Hong and he took his name 大傻 from some Hong Kong personality/show. Phonetically it sounds like “you big fool” and there is the famous Cantonese tune of “bin gor wa wo sor” (“Who says I’m a fool”). However, due to the reasons of politics (Speak Mandarin campaign) and the TV, he was slowly phased out as he didn’t want to change from Cantonese story-telling and also due to the popularity of TV – it would have been meaningless for him and the essence of the story, spoken in a language that is not so familiar to him in terms of speech, would be lost (Note: he understood Mandarin perfectly well). He had many ups & downs in his life even though he was really a simple man.

Watching the show, the significance of how it was played came upon me – the actor playing 李大傻 only spoke Cantonese throughout the whole show as opposed to others. To me, this symbolised his steadfastness in his principles and emphasized certain issues.

Caught DollHouse by Mabou Mines at Drama Centre last night as part the Arts Fest programme. It was the 1st night of the play, and who else but Goh Chok Tong and his wife graced the event.

Anyway, it was a rather interesting show set in a playhouse-like dollhouse with tall, full-sized women and short men (3’4” to 4’5”). The wife, Nora is a submissive, child-like character to her husband Torvald, who treats her like a pet; she is like a pretty doll/puppet to him. Something happens, or rather something she did came back to her which would “disgrace” him, but eventually, it was resolved, except that she realises that it was time to break free. At that point, one realises the significance of the setting.

The grandest scene was the end where there was a whole backdrop of puppets as the husband & wife sings (opera-style), where she says she’s leaving him & the reasons, while he tries to salvage their relationship. The puppets imitated their mannerism during this “dialogue”. Eventually, the big finale came with her stripping off her clothes & wig (she was bald!), like stripping off her doll image.

I would say it was a serious comedy as there were many funny parts and exaggerations.

Went to watch “Silence of the Kittens” (Singapore Theatre Festival) last night. Not bad.

It’s a political satire reflecting how it will be like if we become so “puristic” that we become a sterile nation. It used the analogy of the ban of having cats as pets in HDB flats (didn’t know that?!). For strays or “abnormalities” (or non-conformists), like the stray cats, they will be culled.

A Wild Rice production, this was really good! Had fun all the way. Basically, it’s like a medley of poems, plays & fiction performed by the group…the transition between each work was done very well & flowed nicely. It’s very locally flavoured…very funny. Well, some parts you’ve got to know about the Singaporean euphemism before you might understand the humour.

The 1st half was the display of some Singapore works, while the 2nd half was that of Malaysian works. The way the 2nd part was performed was rather unique (at least I’ve never watched 1 like that before); it was tikam tikam style. Before the interval, the players actually went down to the audience to ask them to randomly pick out the sequence of the plays (like a ‘draw lots’ thingy) to be performed. The players were given 1 hour to play out as many plays as possible in the picked sequence (32 in all). So each performance will be different. The actors were great! Made the 2-3 hours fly past.

I now have a new, improved view of local theatre and we have good players! We inject a lot of local flavour in our productions which is great & fun! Although, I sometimes wonder why it’s usually only the comedies.