I've always
loved art that makes you childlike. Give me those towering installations
in museums that make you feel small in wonderment; those playful experiments
in poetry that frame the language as if you're learning it for the first
time. We've built up sturdy psychological defenses as adults, and art
can break them down, make us willing to accept and absorb the greater
world beyond us, to make us learn.
The Secret Souk is a work of children's theatre. Nothing
in the publicity material suggested that it was anything other than
a piece for adults, and no children were present in the audience the
night I attended. Yet there's no better way to sum up the use of spectacle,
fable and chorus and the general mood of innocence that was the stuff
of the play.
Children's plays uplift the jaded soul. It was childlike amazement
I felt as I witnessed the stunning visuals of the shadow puppetry, the
water-sleeve dance, a web of ribbons to represent interlocking destinies,
the deft dance of the moving stalls of the pasar malam set. I was equally
thrown back to the days of primary-school clap-alongs as the five cast
members of diverse nationalities chanted their multilingual market calls
in a toe-tapping, ear-thrilling ensemble of voices. And the very premise
of the play, that of a market where stories are sold along with vegetables,
is the marvelous stuff of an Arabian Nights bedtime story.
Yet there's a problem. As much as I love children's theatre, I'm an
adult, and a critical one too.
As much as I was willing to play along with the actors' game of having
an audience member choose the first story via the purchase of vegetables,
I felt impatient when, on the second opening of the market twenty minutes
later, the same rules of the game were repeated word for word, with
several phrases in over-theatrical unison. And did the director not
consider that, since almost the entire Chinese population of Singapore
has heard the legend of Chang-Er and Houyi, it might be less than riveting
when used as the first story of the night? (Personally, I'm turned childlike
more by things wondrously new and surprising than by nostalgia for days
of being short with shaky milk teeth.) There was also an unfortunate
proliferation of "cute" humour, such as Chang-Er's flying to heaven
while mimicking the noise of her flapping arms with her own name, chanting,
"Chang-Er, Chang-Er, Chang-Er, Chang-Er, Chang-Er!" Though I'm generally
disposed to laugh, this show seldom brought me beyond the level of a
chuckle.
Certainly, the framing story of the market attempted a mature statement,
regarding the place of the arts in an increasingly materialist world.
I'll applaud the apt sustained metaphor of the conflict as one
between the worlds of the moon and the sun, although the lunar imagery
was hammered home with zero subtlety in the recounted fables. Yet the
story could have been performed so much better - it was slow in
the beginning, as the focus remained on the fairy tales, so the actual
characters of the market vendors emerged late, as did the problematic
foundations of their story trade, derived from a CD-ROM rather than
tradition.
The historical positioning of the play was also bizarrely inconsistent,
what with the vendors, including the Indian national Sankar Chindavalap
Venkateswaran, decked out in gaudy Song dynasty costume, even as they
spoke about health spas, software piracy and cultural erosion in their
village, negotiating the issue of their licence with a police officer
in contemporary uniform. A child may not have been addled by anachronism,
but a nitpicking know-it-all twenty-something points out that a lot
of trouble could have been saved if the costumier had gone along the
path of sarongs and sandals and T-shirts instead.
The actual physical acting of the actors also left something to be
desired, especially during the first two narrated stories. With the
stage cleared of props, I began to notice the large spaces between actors
points when their bodies should have commanded all my attention. Often,
an uninteresting play of levels or a slow reaction from an actor turned
what could have been a great scene into an underwhelming one. It might
say something about the quality of the script that one of the best scenes
was an extended uncomfortable silence following the announcement, "And
now, we will wait until night!" - although the hilarious tension of
the waiting that followed may bode well for the troupe's upcoming Beckett
anthology in August
One might excuse the iffiness of the script with the fact that English
is not the primary language for many of the actor/devisers of the play.
Yet another beautiful moment contradicts this: the tale that Chinese
national Xu Jia Li relates of the creation of lady's finger vegetables.
Xu was able to deliver a simple yet powerfully moving story in English,
in spite of the fact that throughout its telling she was standing in
a spotlight, stationary, save for a few hand gestures. Sometimes, in
the field of dramatic movement, less is more - and more is usually also
more, but almost is never enough.
One personal complaint I have against this play is that so much more
could have been yielded from the premise. A night market for the barter
of stories could have been played as a site for a sinister, Borgesian
drama that reflects on the honesty and motivations for telling stories
as well as the value of sharing them. Yet I'm also aware that
something of the childlike fancy of the play would also have been lost
this way. There's nothing wrong per se with the techniques of
children's theatre that were employed. It's simply that
they could have used plenty of sharpening.
Ultimately, The Secret Souk is a fun night out, and while
the childishness of its theatrics may become irritating after a while,
it's never actually cringe-worthy - and, just as importantly, the show
is never boring. It's a pity that the director failed to consider the
cynical spectator's reaction to his jumping-jack nursery fable and cutesified
moral allegory. Still, even the cynic is broken down at times by the
spectacle and sweetness of the show, which is, after all, staged by
students rehearsed in different traditions of drama. Perhaps the spectator
must take his own steps to open himself to innocence. Perhaps it is
enough to be made childlike half the time. |
"Even the cynic is broken down at times by the spectacle and sweetness
of the show"
Credits
Director: Russel Cheek
Lighting and Sound Designer: Ben Watts
Set and Costume Designer: James Browne
Production Manager: Pierre-André Salim
Cast: Felix Hung Chit Wah, Sia Ee Mien, Tan Seok Chin,
Amelia, Sankar Chindavalap Venkateswaran, Xu Jia Li
Previous Productions by The Theatre Training and Research Programme
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From: The Editor (matthewlyon@myway.com / Wednesday, March 8, 2006 at 09:31:10)
Got anything to say about the review or the production? Click the button above and let us know.
From: Nel (rainwatch@hotmail.com / Monday, March 13, 2006 at 01:40:46)
It's a pity most of us have been so detached from our very own Asian tradition. If one is familiar with the street theatre tradition of the Song Dynasty in China (cheers, does that somehow explain the costume?), with village theatre in India, with comic sketches in Chinese Opera, with rough, earthy, slap-stick, bigger-than-life acting in almost all Asian performing tradition of the common people (not the court tradition or the refine ones that are often retained as national treasures), one may not need that much innocence to enjoy this piece, but less modern, western theatre pespective to appreciate it. cheers.
From: Ng Yi-Sheng (ng.yisheng@gmail.com / Monday, March 13, 2006 at 04:26:57)
Thanks for your input, Nel. I'd just like to take you up on a particular point there: rough acting is not only pan-Asian, it is universal, and some contemporary Western acting theory is also based on the stock motions and buffoonery of Italian commedia dell'arte. Pretty much anyone can enjoy coarse acting and slapstick - I just didn't think it was done particularly well. The trope of children's theatre I used was a reference to the fact that it's within the context of children's theatre or circus that the acts of the clown and acrobat are now frequently associated.
Evidently you enjoyed the piece, but I doubt that it's productive to use our respective ethnocentrisms as a debating point. The Secret Souk isn't staged as jingju or wayang wong, after all; it's staged in the context of a universal theatre. I represent one opinion of this universal audience, as do you. What was your overall appraisal of the show, independent of my comments? I'm rather curious to know.
From: nel (rainwatch@hotmail.com / Tuesday, March 28, 2006 at 16:46:50)
hi Yi Sheng,
Your point taken and I do agree.
My overall opinion about the play is that it is not one without flaws. Although I do enjoy some bits of the production, I find a major problem with the direction-- a common shortcoming of most devised piece -- in which at the end of the day, I am left clueless about what the production is trying to be. as a children / young adult performance, it is up to standard but not particularly superb. As a adult / universal play, it lacks depth. Most of all, it is unclear if it tries to be a story play, an interactive play, realistic, fantastic, plot centered or otherwise etc.? In short, there are many interesting aspects of the production but a central core that will gel all things together has yet to be found.
cheers
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