Devotees
of the pectoral, deltoid and other fine muscle groups will find much
to savour as supertoned, ultratanned swimming instructor Ah Guan (Lim
Wee Hong) struts across the public pool set in nothing but a pair of
skimpy trunks. Unfortunately, there is little else worth watching in
ACTION Theatre’s latest revival of The Swimming Instructor.
Better off as a flesh and fashion (BODYNITS is strategically emblazoned
across Lim’s posterior – product placement, anyone?) parade
than a play, this production is the perfect occasion for a couple of
hotties like Lim to shimmy across the stage in as few clothes as is
NC-16 permissible.
Unfortunately, the NC-16 world demands less hanky panky and a lot more
plot. Cue Desmond Sim’s soggy exploration of sexuality, love and
loss, which has the actors plunging headlong into moody journeys of
self-discovery. Sim milks the repressed homosexual stereotype for as
many melodramatic plot twists as this production’s length can
manage. A straight man seemingly cocksure about his sexuality who, alas,
turns out to be a secretly gay emotional basketcase? Check. A gay man
who, seemingly cocksure about his sexuality, also turns out to be an
emotional basketcase? Check. Throw in a go-getting seductress, the perfect
catalyst for a perplexing love triangle and voila! There is drama at
the pool.
To complicate matters these characters all have secret pasts, alluded
to in “never-before-seen” film sequences that should have
remained exactly that way – never before seen. Several sequences
reveal that Stereotype Number Three (a.k.a. Go-Getting Seductress),
Isabella Chiam’s Jan, is not a caricature of a spoilt rich girl,
but of a spoilt rich girl dogged by her parents’ adultery. These
sequences predictably involve a toyboy Jan’s age, her equally
go-getting mother, and some butoh dancing in the living room.
Such banality persists as filmmaker Sherman Ong attempts to re-create
a Brokeback Mountain-esque romance that haunts Stereotype Number
One, Ah Guan himself. In these sequences, Ah Guan and another boy fall
asleep in front of the telly, fiddle with fishing rods at a jetty and
stare into space on a pool deck. Both are maddeningly silent throughout:
we are expected to discern a forbidden longing from their deadpan expressions.
Finally, the boy comes out and confesses a crush on Ah Guan, only for
the latter to reject him. He promptly commits suicide.
Stereotype Number Two’s back-story tempers the tiresome melodrama
of his counterparts’ with equally tiresome comedy. Unable to subdue
his stalker’s increasingly vociferous advances, Dave (Jeremy Lee)
finds himself mired in clichéd gay farce that escalates into
a predictably embarrassing scene at a restaurant.
When he recalls The Stalker Episode at the swimming complex, Dave splashes
water about violently, becomes delirious and throws fits. It is a (over)reaction
as random and bewildering as the film sequences themselves.
As their lives intersect and their pasts are dragged into the present,
these characters decide that the best way to confront their troubles
is to revel in self-indulgent musings on a variety of Life’s subjects.
Under Loretta Chen’s clumsy direction, they move from one end
of the stage to the other to talk. And talk. And talk and talk and talk.
The play unfolds not so much through a series of events as the tedious
dialogue issuing from the actors’ mouths.
While Dave ponders love’s auditory qualities (“…sometimes
it’s really there. And we have to listen to it.”), her parents’
disintegrating marriage provokes Jan to rant, “People say at marriages
‘I love you’ when we mean, I love you today, and tomorrow
we’ll see what happens!” Thoughtful questions also punctuate
the dialogue: have you ever wondered “why do people stop loving
each other?” And just in case the script, or what passes for one,
gets too subtle, the characters are made to mouth tacky one-liners like,
“We’re all looking for that special someone right!”
The torpor is leavened by some howlingly awful sexual repartee. Humour
is obviously not Sim’s strong suit: when he is not fishing for
cheap laughs (to Ah Guan’s insinuation that she is a slut, Jan
retorts, “I may behave like a mamasan, but that doesn’t
mean this nightclub is open to public!”), he resorts to talky
inanities like “Introductions are so redundant after you’ve
touched someone all over”.
A weak, uninspired cast rounds off The Swimming Instructor’s
woes. That the actors lack nuance and subtlety in their delivery is
a gross understatement. Initially, this reviewer is pleasantly surprised
when Lim convincingly captures the coarseness of a typically boorish
swimming instructor. However, one soon realizes that his performance
keeps banging on that one note. He constantly shouts his lines, and
seems to think that all sorts of emotions – anger, impatience,
disappointment, lust – can be expressed in one single grimace.
As the poorly closeted, uptight Dave, Lee is a handsome face and an
unnatural accent in search of a character. Lee is as secure of his acting
abilities as Dave is of his sexuality: he stumbles over more than a
few lines, and seems distinctly uncomfortable on stage. Chiam, on the
other hand, is less constipated as wily go-getting Jan. However, given
the limited emotional range of her character, this is not difficult.
At first, she preens and pouts, then settles for screechy angst-laden
rants in the latter half of the play. For Chiam, it is a matter of arranging
her face rather than of expressing any plausible motive or emotion.
The Swimming Instructor’s abruptly tragic close (another
repressed homosexual bites the dust) raises potentially interesting
ideas about human reaction to loss. Characteristically enough, neither
the producers nor the actors have any notion of how to explore them.
Such undiluted nonsense is best suited for aficionados of soap opera
theatrics involving beautiful and stupid young people. And if Lim ever
finds a director willing to allow him to perform fully clothed throughout
the play, there will be no stopping him.
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"Devotees of the pectoral, deltoid and other fine muscle groups
will find much to savour ... Unfortunately, there is little else worth
watching in ACTION Theatre’s latest revival of The Swimming Instructor."
Credits
Directed by Loretta Chen (stage) and Sherman Ong (film
sequences)
Produced by Ekachai Uekrongtham
Written by Desmond Sim
Starring Lim Wee Hong, Isabella Chiam and Jeremy Lee
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