There are
quite a few youth-oriented theatre companies in Singapore. Some such
as young & W!LD are under the auspices of an established theatre
company but others, like Quiet Riot, bring together alumni of junior
college drama clubs and theatre studies programmes who want to strike
out on their own right from the beginning. Their gumption is laudable
but, as is the case here, they are not always ready to be held up against
the standard of professional theatre - and that is a problem when they
are charging professional theatre prices. This is not to say that The
Minister's Wife?!, Quiet Riot's inaugural production, is not without
its strengths but, ultimately, it remains a school play.
The first half of Wife?! is a standard comedy of errors: Minister
Bertram Subramaniam (Akesh Abhilash) plans to win over a tycoon by wining
and dining him in his home but his plans go awry when Clarisse (Jeane
Reveendran), the Minister's wife, mistakes Michael Tan (Jason Khor),
an ah beng living in Bertram's constituency, for Michael Han (Muhd Nur
Hadri), the rich and powerful businessman. Tangled up in this is a political
scandal involving a sex tape which is eventually revealed to be of Bertram
and maid Aminah (Loh Supei). A few lines were inserted rather clunkily
just to get a laugh and there were some truly ludicrous conceits for
which disbelief had to be suspended - the central plot device that Clarisse
could confuse the two Michaels, for example, or even that Michael Tan
was able to wander up to Bertram's doorstep at all - but, by and large,
I found the script to be rather witty and charming with a consistent
narrative pull that kept the proceedings moving along quite nicely.
Direction was also solid, particularly in the way that the actors were
moved about onstage and I thought the lights were used effectively to
differentiate which parts of the apartment that were in play.
The main problem with the play though was in its pace and timing and
I'm afraid to say that this was due to some very weak work indeed
by the ensemble cast. The actors lacked conviction and precision in
their performances and some were simply miscast. Reveendran fared best,
having the comic flair to pull off her screeching howler monkey role
of a tarted up tai tai but even her performance started to grate after
a while because it lacked variation. Akesh is a promising actor: he
has stage presence and delivers his lines with punch. However, his flamboyant
performance left me wondering how confident the actor really is in himself
because he was reacting or rather, over-reacting, to every single moment.
To grow as an actor, he needs to be more secure about himself onstage,
stop over-compensating and put aside his repertoire of tics to concentrate
on getting a stronger sense of his character.
To be fair, because the play was so over the top and silly, some of
the bad acting actually became part of the joke (unfortunately, this
was at the actors' expense). Still, while I did smile consistently
throughout the first half of the evening, I only laughed out loud a
couple of times and this is a problem when the show is set up to be
an all-out farce.
The strangest thing then happened about an hour into the play: just
as it approached its climax, Wife?! came to a screeching halt.
A producer walked on stage and declared that, due to a technical difficulty,
the audience had to leave the theatre. Since this coincided with the
appropriate time for an interval and the actors seemed much too calm,
I assumed this was all part of the show. It was - and we returned for
a second half in which we were told that the script for Wife?!
had been banned but the actors would have to continue anyway (without
a script) so as to give us our money's worth.
In my conversation with director Michael Quilindo after the show, he
said that the series of comedy sketches that followed was meant to illustrate
how, even as artists rail against censorship, they too must take personal
responsibility for their art and not expect a free pass in the name
of artistic freedom. There is a way to deliver social commentary in
the form of a sketch show - The Necessary Stage's Abuse
Suxxx!!! or Close
In My Face, for example - but, in this case, the comedy completely
overshadowed any message because the former was front and centrestage
while the latter was never taken up in any sustained way. With credit
to all involved, many of the sketches were indeed outrageously funny
but they could only be enjoyed as parody for its own sake rather than
as satire or to make a point. Quilindo and his actors were not able
to calibrate their comedy as carefully as they would have liked and
so missed many opportunities to realise the full potential of their
concept. One example of this is the nativity scene with an atheist,
a cross-dressing makcik and a Buddhist monk as the three wise men. Quilindo's
focus was on the comedy which is all well and good but to serve his
greater ambition, it was the moment when Loh broke out of character
and stormed off in anger, saying that the scene was blasphemous and
thus disrespectful to her as a Christian, that he should have seized
on to discuss say, religion in art - instead, the scene simply ended
at this point.
Still, while some judicious editing would not have gone amiss (actors
got angry and stormed off the set in mock-anger way too many times),
I certainly had little quarrel with the second half simply in terms
of being funny. Like for most teenagers, Quiet Riot's comedy worked
best when it was irreverent, camp or a parody of popular culture and
that was what informed much of the comedy in these sketches. Akesh's
Borat impersonation, for example, was spot-on and Reveendran's transgendered
herbal tea seller was another winner. You could see real investment
on the part of the actors where it had been lacking before. But by far
the greatest triumph was Hadri who seemed to have suddenly come alive
in the second half. Why he was cast as the bland and colourless Michael
Han in the first half is beyond me. When asked to play camp or larger
than life characters instead, like a drag queen Tina Turner wanna-be,
he excelled with utterly shameless scene-stealing.
So, all in all, an entertaining night? Yes. But Quiet Riot still has
some way to go if it wants to establish itself as a professional theatre
company. Quiet Riot may need some mentorship but young & W!LD has
proven that age doesn't matter when it comes to achieving quality so
I hope they persevere. |
"I certainly had little quarrel with the second half simply in
terms of being funny"
Credits
Producers: Muhd Nur Hadri and Michael Quilindo
Director: Michael Quilindo
Assistant Director: Amy Lim
Stage Manager and Wardrobe Manager: Vicki Yang
Dramaturge, Technical Manager and Lighting Designer:
Khairul Nizam
Stagehand: Alyssa Rae Tan
Make up: Rohaizatul Azhar
Cast: Jeane Reveendran, Loh Supei, Akesh Abhilash,
Jason Khor and Muhd Nur Hadri
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