Christ. This
was one of the most lopsided plays I've ever had the luck to see. Act
one was unfocused, riddled with irrelevant parodies and poorly performed
(**1/2) - but act two was fantastic; one of the best satires of Singapore
governance I've witnessed, both moving and incisive (****1/2).
Ironically, this imbalance was the result of Eleanor Wong's division
of the play into exact, mirroring halves. Act one centres on the struggles
of David Lee, the student activist attempting to muster support for
the eponymous campaign. David was played by Rodney Oliveiro, while all
supporting characters were played by Pam Oei. Act two told the tale
of rising civil servant Clara Tang (aka 2DS), who performs damage control
in the wake of David's mysterious death. Clara was performed by Oei;
all supporting characters were Oliveiro's provenance.
Such a yin-yang construction requires strong actors of roughly equal
ability. As anyone who's watched Dim Sum Dollies knows, Pam
Oei is a phenomenal talent - Rodney Oliveiro, sadly, is less remarkable.
Throughout act one, he failed to win us over with the wide-eyed idealism
of his character. The primacy of his role exposed his habit of saying
different lines with exactly the same tonal stresses. And Pam's countless
cameos, appearing as multiethnic receptionists and talk-show hostesses,
repeatedly upstaged Oliveiro's portrayal of his hapless character, unable
to find support for his campaign.
But Oliveiro's casting in itself didn't cause the failure of the first
act - the playwright hadn't quite developed enough of a specific emotional
background for him to explore, allowing him to function as an everyman
with a sudden interest in self-expression. Barely a minute would pass
without a cheap joke, of which I'll give you three examples: David runs
the Association of Students for Self-expression (ASS); he attempts to
reach JBJ through the inexplicably New-Agey podcast of the Mrs Brown
Show; and also through a so-bad-it's-not-really-funny Singapore
Idol audition. Even Oei couldn't do much with the character of
David's best friend, "the faithful, feisty vice-president of ASS",
whose eccentric one-liners wore thin with the audience, appearing simply
as pathetic attempts at humour.
Plus, as you can see from Boon
Chan's review, I wasn't the only one in the house who was pissed
that it was a fictional JBJ, not the politician, who was the focus of
David's campaign in the first act. Most of us bought tickets with the
clear expectation of some engagement with the life of Joshua B Jeyaratnam
himself - not for a feature on the fictional Mr JB who runs a Wildlife
Preservation group (WP, hyuk-hyuk) to protect the endangered Buangkok
white elephant. Sure, this might have been necessary to obtain approval
for the play from MDA, but was it really necessary to have all these
references to "the other Mr JBJ" whom everyone thinks is a
figure to be ignored at all costs?
It wasn't all bad - there was some cartoonish entertainment in David's
attention-seeking antics for his campaign, and some worthy insight into
the paranoia of Singaporeans when confronted by the possibility of political
surveillance. One just expects better from the playwright who gave us
Singapore's great trilogy
of lesbian
drama.
So this reviewer was pleasantly surprised after the intermission to
find that act two wasn't just improved - it was a whole other play:
less flippant in mood, more well-defined in character construction and
development, but no less entertaining. Oei delivered a superb interpretation
of the morally ambiguous civil servant Clara Tang, whom the audience
couldn't quite help liking for not being as evil and narrow-minded as
everyone else in the civil service. The identity of JBJ himself no longer
mattered - now, the audience was fixated on the means whereby Clara
(known to all civil servants as 2DS) navigated the system of intrigue
that surrounded a governmental cover-up. Clara's emotional journey was
especially well-crafted - in between the political commentary, we came
to understand her past as a young radical leftist, her estranged relationship
with her senior civil servant father whom everyone knew better than
her, and her tortured romance with an ex-young-PAP journalist now committed
to free speech. Pam never overplayed her emotions, making us ache all
the more at her repression and her struggle, letting us only imagine
what she must have been like in her youth, before her ideals atrophied.
Oliveiro, surprisingly, more than redeemed himself by playing a host
of supporting characters - some of these, like the insecure Police DSP
and the uppity Permanent Secretary, were hilarious caricatures, whereas
some, like Clara's on-and-off boyfriend, were fully fleshed out, three-dimensional
figures. The variety of personalities conjured up is demonstration of
the actor's range - the audience roared in laughter at Eddie Bambang
Hariyanto, a flaming send-up of Ong Keng Sen, but was chilled by his
menacing appearance as "The Old Man", an unspecified character
who stood only in the shadows with high connections in Intelligence
and Security. Perhaps Oliveiro has it in him to become an actor of excellence
- if only he could bring to a leading character the same variety of
speech tones he gives to a range of supporting roles.
It's difficult to assess a play that's composed of two halves of such
disparate qualities. In certain ways, the success of act two actually
hurt act one - the garish and unnecessary use of video projections in
act one was probably prompted by a desire to be consistent with act
two, which featured such projections at strong, apposite junctures.
Plus, my date for the evening was turned off act two as well, simply
because it didn't follow the style of act one.
But ratings aside, The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star
on JBJ will go down in the history books because it dares to speak
truths about Singapore in a time of ideological confusion. It explains
how political repression exists in the minds of the governed as much
as in the arm of the government, that the civil service is deeply uncertain
over what is now permitted in an age of superficial liberty, that the
arts can be the government's tool in conspiracy, that our system can
and does continue to crush lives in its relentless pursuit of control.
More than Exit, perhaps more than Invitation to Treat,
this is a piece of Eleanor Wong's work that will have resonance for
years to come. Let's just cross our fingers and hope that her future
work - and our future political system - can have more balance.
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"JBJ dares to speak truths about Singapore in a time of ideological
confusion"
Second Opinion
Credits
Playwright: Eleanor Wong
Director: Ivan Heng
Cast: Pam Oei and Rodney Oliveiro
Scenic Designer: Ivan Heng
Video Artist: Casey Lim
Lighting Designer: Yo Shao Ann
Costume Designer: Mothar Kassim
Hair and Wigs: Ashley Lim
Production Manager: BB Koh
Stage Manager: Elnie Mashari
Technical Manager: Teo Kuang Han
Assistant Stage Manager: Alycia Finley
Stage Assistants: Ben Ng, Kala Rahman
Wardrobe Mistress: Pauline Tan
Wardrobe Assistant: Chang Jia Yin
Producer: Tony Trickett
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