Playwright-director
Zizi Azah Bte Abdul Majid's follow-up to her 2006 breakthrough How
Did The Cat Get So Fat? is the story of three young sisters who
are struggling to eke out a simple existence in the fictitious country
of Nowits. Nowits has been taken over by a group of invaders called
the Hafits who have stripped the Nowitians of their territory, their
rights and their freedom, restricting them to a barren stretch of land
surrounded by a specially constructed wall. Eventually, one of the sisters
decides to join a protest against the Hafits and is imprisoned. Her
two sisters crawl under the long stretch of wall to free her and at
one point, the eldest tries to comfort the youngest by reminding her
that if she looks up, she will see that "above us", there is "always
sky".
It was a moment that rang with such promise and hope that I had to
check my programme to see that I had not misremembered the title of
the play. Indeed, the actual title, which states not that there is always
sky, but that there is only sky, is a truer representation
of the sisters' situation: they manage to return to Nowits in one piece
but grow mad from starvation, finally hallucinating that a magic bean
they have found will be able to produce food to sustain them. One member
of the audience expressed confusion during the post-show talk over whether
planting this miracle bean does, in fact, go on to save them - but to
me the ending is clear: when hope is all you have, sometimes it just
isn't enough.
Zizi adopts a very austere approach to recreating this stark dystopia
onstage: there are no props (everything is mimed) and the set by Dennis
Cheok consists only of a series of giant metal cages that can be reconfigured
to form, for example, the sisters' home, a deserted marketplace or a
jail cell. Moving around panels of metal mesh to cover different sides
of the cages and physically shifting the cages about do sometimes slow
the action down. However, the cold, hard steel of the rectangular cages
works very effectively as a symbol of the girls' physical imprisonment
and loss of individuality, and the barren condition of the country they
now find themselves living in. The overall effect is complemented by
suitably moody music by sound designer Amran Khamis (of the instrumental
collective I Am David Sparkle), by all three actors wearing costumes
made out of the same black-and-white checkered material, and by a lighting
design from Fita Helmi that punctuates the blue-tinged darkness with
the occasional pulse of ominous red.
This intimate and focused staging draws you into the play but, more
importantly, when set against this bleak backdrop of hopelessness and
a constant threat of danger, Zizi's motifs develop greater poignancy.
Metal cages, magic beans, a giant wall surrounding the city, three sisters
played by three actors of different races... more discerning audience
members may criticise these elements for being trite or blatant. However,
they struck a chord with me because their simplicity - the way they
harked back to childhood fairytales - reminded me that what is most
at stake in a war are innocence and hope. At one point, one of the sisters
says she would rather die than continue living the way she does and
that is the harsh dilemma of those who are exiled, internally displaced
or made to become refugees in their own homes, whether in a once-divided
Germany or a war-torn Gaza Strip.
A friend argued that Sky does not offer any fresh insight
to the complexities of such conflicts and while I agree, I would also
counter that we should judge a work by its creator's intentions. As
with Cat, I do not believe that Zizi meant for Sky
to serve as incisive political commentary or to offer solutions to complicated
social problems. Zizi speaks less from the head than from the heart:
in Sky, she is simply trying to present the different perspectives
and stories of everyday people so that we, the audience, may continue
to remember, may continue to care and may be led into action of some
form - and there is great value in such work. The measure of success
for her works should be the authenticity and truth that she can bring
to the emotions of her narratives and here, as an audience member, I
was convinced.
Having said that, I cannot recommend Sky unreservedly either.
While the narrative arc is nicely structured and the story is engaging,
the dialogue is inconsistent, slipping into mawkish territory in a few
places. There are also problems with how the lines are distributed between
the three actors such that the rhythm is sometimes disjointed most distractingly
when the sisters converse. For the most part, the actors are solid but
none of them delivers a truly inspired performance either. To be fair,
this is perhaps due to the constraints of the stock characters they
have to play. There simply isn't much for Grace Kalaiselvi d/o Piramayan
to do other than stand around and look stoic and noble as the sensible
eldest sister. Josephine Tan throws herself into her difficult role
as the dreamy youngest sister who has a series of twitchy, nervous breakdowns
throughout the play - but this began to wear on me after a while and
the character was not well-defined beyond that. Siti Khalijah has the
most to work with as the middle sister who is at first defiant but finally
cowers, humiliated and alone, before her oppressors. Siti handles the
journey of her character well and is wholly convincing but there is
nothing here that she has not done before.
For an emerging playwright, a massive success like Cat can
be a blessing or a burden and Sky certainly invites comparisons
as there are clear similarities between the two pieces. In the end,
though, I think Zizi acquits herself quite nicely. While I would argue
that Cat has the stronger and steadier voice of the two, Sky
is nonetheless effective as a meditation (rather than a thesis) on the
effects of war and terrorism and is, indeed, occasionally quite moving.
It is also heartening to see Zizi not only tackling a much larger canvas
but also having the confidence in her narrative to stay focused instead
of freefalling into unnecessary abstraction (yes, I remain unconvinced
by the talking eye and ear in Cat). Sky has certainly
kept me looking forward to Zizi's next work. |
"The intimate and focused staging draws you into the play but,
more importantly, when set against the bleak backdrop of hopelessness
and the constant threat of danger, Zizi's motifs develop great poignancy"
Credits
Playwright and Director: Zizi Azah Bte Abdul Majid
Production Stage Manager: Izmir Ickbal
Lighting Designer: Fita Helmi
Set Designer: Dennis Cheok
Sound Designer: Amran Khamis / I Am David Sparkle
Cast: Siti Khalijah, Grace Kalaiselvi d/o Piramayan
and Josephine Tan
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