One cannot
help but go into a production entitled Wong Kar Wai Dreams
with certain expectations. Even if you have seen only one of the acclaimed
Hong Kong director's films, you would be acutely aware of the director's
distinctive cinematic style. As noted in the programme for Dreams,
his signature aesthetic includes "luminous reflections of cityscapes
... colour-saturated cinematography and music-suffused visuals";
his narratives usually revolve around "sombre and neurotic characters
spouting elliptical one-liners" and navigating a world of nostalgia,
frustrated romances and "an air of pessimism and gloom".
The theme of dreaming as the ambiguous intersection
between living in the world of reality and living in the world of memory
and fantasy, which playwright / director Chong Tze Chien explores in
Dreams, fits Wong's cinematic motifs perfectly. The Finger
Players, whose unique vocabulary involving the innovative use of puppetry
and physical theatre has been used to stunning effect in previous works
by the company, is also the ideal match for recreating Wong's expressionistic
palette and hypnotic dreamscapes onstage.
Indeed, there were many moments of visual beauty
in Dreams that reminded me of similarly poignant beats in the
films by Wong's films. Even something as stripped down as a simple butterfly
puppet which looked as if it had been made out of vanguard paper by
a child in a kindergarten class surprised and moved me as it flitted
around onstage at numerous points during the play, its wings in motion
under the expert hand of the puppeteer, before suddenly taking flight
and soaring across the stage unaided in the final breathtaking scene.
Another magical moment occurred at the very beginning of the play when
a man scrawled the title of the play across one of the giant structures
used as part of the set, only for him to continue his writing beyond
the border of the structure into midair.
More cynical audiences may have found these flights
of fantasy to be little more than visual tricks but they were vital
to my meditative journey into Wong's world where you are always aware
that the smallest moment could be the tipping point to change the course
of the narrative or suddenly reveal a character's tidal wave of loneliness
and loss. For me, they were the keys which opened the doors into Wong's
atmospheric dreamscape - a dreamscape represented by the constantly
shifting and sliding set, the vivid colours of the costumes and props
and the elaborate sequences where cinema-sized shadows were projected
on a screen to recreate scenes from Wong's films.
Because the films by Wong which I had seen were
all essentially mood pieces draped over the most basic narrative structures
(if you need a Hollywood analogue, think of Sofia Coppola's Lost
In Translation), what I was unprepared for was Dreams'
busy, hard-nosed story, which involved young lovers spouting tart repartee
and explicit sexual references. Whether it is the forlorn gay lovers
of Happy Together or Tony Leung and his women in 2046,
the focus in Wong's films is always on (thwarted) romance and love and
never the act of sex itself. In Dreams, however, sex is all
the characters seem to talk about, with a paedophilic subplot being
particularly unnerving.
I am not a prude by any means and, in fact, I
found the frustrated love triangle between policeman Bernard (presumably
a sly nod to Leung's character, also a policeman, in Chungking Express)
and best friends Ling and Trish, engagingly written as a set piece.
My problem with the narrative - and the chorus of ensemble actors playing
Wong's film crew as a bumbling team of mechanicals straight out of A
Midsummer Night's Dream - was that it jarred with the lush, evocative
mood of the rest of the production. While watching Dreams,
I often wished I could reach in and pull apart the strands of what seemed
like two different plays: one which had a timeless, majestic, dream-like
quality to it and the another which seemed very contemporary, verbose
and irreverent. I suspect this mix of moods was a conscious aesthetic
on the part of Chong to reflect the surreal complexity of real life
and the unpredictability of dreams, but I found it distracting rather
than illuminating.
I've had a conflicted relationship with Loong Seng
Onn (Bernard) as an actor for some time. I do like his physicality and there
is something sincere and playful about him onstage which endears his characters
to me, but his over-enunciation of words and staccato cadence tend to detract
from his performances. Serene Chen (Ling) and Karen Tan (Trish), on the
other hand, have long been two of my favourite actresses on the Singapore
stage and their sensitive and confident performances helped to smooth over
some of my misgivings with Dreams as a whole. Even when the writing
was a little too contrived or overcooked, they helped me have some emotional
investment in the fates of their mouthy characters.
It was Christina Sergeant who plays an older
Ling and the ghostly narrator of Dreams, however, who truly
commanded the stage that evening and anchored the production. As with
Loong, I've sometimes found the way Sergeant speaks to be a problem
when trying to access her characters. Her speech is usually too perfect
and precise, her accent, too specific and strong. Here, however, she
had completely transformed her voice to haunting effect and the transformation
was complemented by remarkable work from the make-up, costume and lighting
team as well as the way Sergeant carried herself as an old woman weighed
down with regret and possessing only the smallest spark of hope as she
looks back on her life. It was her character - the quiet yet evocative
way it was written, presented and performed - that bridged the two worlds
of the play best.
I did wonder as I left the play, however, what
the experience would have been like for members of the audience who
were coming in with different expectations and amounts of background
knowledge. After all, there must have been people watching Dreams
without any prior exposure to Wong's works. Might they have found the
clash of moods less disconcerting? Perhaps the jarring moods had been
thrown into sharper relief for me because of my sensitivity to Wong's
aesthetic (I count myself as a fan). Having said that, I am still not
fan enough apparently, because, at many points in the play, members
of the audience burst into laughter at what I presume were references
to aspects of Wong's work or life that I was unfamiliar with. For these
people, the elements of humour laced into the play by Chong (such as
the film crew) would have been amplified by these additional in-jokes.
For example, when Ling reveals to Trish that she loves her best friend's
husband, a moment I found quite affecting, laughter erupted from some
members of the audience. I'm not sure if this was a reference to a film
by Wong or whether these audience members were simply already In The
Mood for Laughs.
Regardless, while Dreams is by no means an unmissable work on
the level of the company's canonical Between
the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, in its exploration of simple but
powerful themes, imaginative direction and high production values, I believe
there is still much about the play to recommend it to any theatregoer. |
"The theme of dreaming as the intersection between waking and sleeping,
between living in the world of reality and the world of memory and fantasy,
which playwright / director Chong Tze Chien mines in Dreams, fits Wong's
cinematic motifs perfectly."
Credits
Director / Playwright / Set Designer: Chong Tze Chien
Production Manager: Joanna Goh
Lighting Designer: Lim Woan Wen
Sound Designer: Darren Ng
Puppet Designers / Conceptualists: Oliver Chong, Tan
Beng Tian, Ong Kian Sin
Stage Manager: Cecilia Chow
Asst Stage Manager: Lu Huen
Crew: Huang Xiang Bin
Surtitles Operator: Chiew Jing Wen
Sound Engineer: Eugene Foo
Master Electrician / Follow-spot Operator: Alan Loh
Make-up Artist: Haslina Ismail
Production Administrator: Natalie Chai
Voice Overs: Zachery Tan, Lim Woan Wen, Oliver Chong
Cast: Serene Chen, Christian Sergeant, Karen Tan, Loong
Seng Onn, Tan Beng Tian, Ong Kian Sin, Oliver Chong, Ang Hui Bin
|
