Unsurprisingly,
references to angels are rife in this play. Songs like the Eurythmics'
There Must Be An Angel Playing With My Heart and the Scorpions'
Send Me An Angel are used as transition music between scenes
and the central storyline of Angel-ism is that of four angels
going about their daily work in Heaven under the instruction of the
Almighty. The quartet, however, aren't dressed like traditional angels
with halo and wings and this works nicely in the play's context as the
more human appearance of the actors reminds us that the ambitious Angel-ism,
while ostensibly about the divine, is much more interested in very human
concerns. What makes angels persevere as symbols in art is that they
speak to fundamental needs: angels symbolize not only unconditional
love and protection but our natural instinct to try and make sense of
why bad things happen in the world.
The Necessary Stage's seminal godeatgod
grappled with similar themes soon after 9/11 and Angel-ism
speaks so powerfully to us today as well because we continue to live
in a world that appears to be on the brink of violent collapse. Every
day, the newspapers are filled with stories about natural disasters,
wars and human suffering on a scale seemingly beyond that previously
imagined or endured. In such difficult times of fear, paranoia and insecurity,
it is not surprising that people turn to the divine for answers, to
seek protection, to find peace. Angel-ism starts off with the
four actors walking up to the audience, sitting and standing among us
as they take turns to recite, in soft, measured tones and bright plastic
smiles, passages that sound like they have been lifted out of a self-help
book, a guide to new-age living or passages from a religious text. I
am discomfited because I am cynical of anything with evangelical overtones
but at the same time, as I sit there, I understand especially how alluring
religions, self-help gurus, or the words of a Rhonda Byrne, Paul Coelho
or even Oprah Winfrey, must be in this day and age. It is, after all,
so much easier to allow yourself to be placed under someone's protection
and guidance than it is to have to face the harsh reality of contemporary
life on your own: method can always be found in madness if one simply
ascribes it to God's "mysterious ways".
Religion, however, does not have all the answers, as the bickering
angels find themselves unable to agree even on what they assume initially
is a very simple question: what is right and wrong? This is expressed
with a backlit and shirtless Helmi Fita, standing in front of a large
pair of silver wings, his mouth wide open in a silent scream, his every
muscle tense, and the words "good" and "bad"
scrawled in white across his chest, divided by a vertical line. It is
also one of the riffs that runs through the play, most poignantly in
reference to Singapore's very own guardian angel, our founding
father, who is imagined here to be at death's door. How is he
to be judged in the end? - and whom will we turn to when he is
gone?
Playwrights Mohd Zulfadli Mohd Rashid and Danny Yeo do not offer us
any concrete answers. They are more interested in taking us on a journey
of exploration through different stories. The mood across these episodes
is generally haunting and sombre but it can be light and playful as
well, as with the surreal "Slap of God" sequence and the parody of the
Gatsby advert featuring Kimura Takuya. These comic scenes, together
with some memorable moments like the muscular Helmi camping it up in
his white shirt and black bustier, tie and stockings, or Rei Poh quietly
standing on a pedestal and blowing soapy bubbles while dressed in a
white boxing robe, are crucial to the success of the play as a whole.
This is because, although they do not always align with the themes of
the play, their punchiness helps sustain audience interest. This is
especially vital due to the rambling nature of some of the vignettes
and the surprisingly slow and clumsy transitions between scenes which
break a lot of the play's momentum - I am still unsure why the directors
thought that bulky equipment transport cases would work well as movable
sets. The play is additionally stabilized by an able cast who, for the
most part, rise to the occasion. This is a demanding work because of
the shifting theatrical modes employed throughout the play: actors have
to engage in everything from musical to physical theatre, from audience
interaction to naturalistic acting. I applaud the actors for their gumption
and spunk though they are a little too heavy-handed and obvious in places
and their timing sometimes lacks finesse. What I like most about the
actors in Angel-ism, however, is how well they work as an ensemble,
aptly symbolized by a scene where all four, like puppies, cuddle up
close to one another and sleep. As in panggung ARTS' inaugural production
Ma'ma Yong earlier this
year, actors seem very much at ease with one another, as if they are
genuine friends who have come together to create a work they all sincerely
believe in. Shida Mahadi and Xi Ai may not be as familiar to audiences
as theatre veteran Helmi or rising star Rei (whom I've already seen
in no less than six plays in the last nine months) but you never feel
that anyone is dominating or retreating into the background.
What I personally found most fascinating about this play though is
how it continues Singapore theatre's growing interest in our country's
multilingual heritage (for example, the recent National
Language Class). Co-directors Aidli "Alin" Mosbit
and Kok Heng Leun said in a video interview that the larger objective
of Angel-ism was to create a piece of theatre that was truly
Singaporean and I think they have succeeded on two fronts. Firstly,
they have clearly drawn from the modern Singapore theatre tradition
of devised work that has marked many local productions, most notably
those by the aforementioned The Necessary Stage. Regardless of whether
this episodic play was co-created through rehearsals by the actors or
developed largely by the playwrights on their own, Angel-ism
is distinctly post-modern; it feels organic, spontaneous and alive with
ideas. Secondly, if
Angel-ism owes a debt to The Necessary Stage's Alvin Tan and
Haresh Sharma, then it also owes one, as festival dramaturg Alfian Sa'at
argues in the programme notes, to the late Kuo Pao Kun, particularly
his Mama
Looking for her Cat which illustrates so well how the sound
of the collision of different cultures and languages is the true voice
of multi-cultural Singapore. It is not the individual languages of English,
Mandarin, Malay or Tamil that are uniquely Singaporean but the cacophony
that results when they rattle and hum against each other.
In Angel-ism, the multi-ethnic cast speaks a mix of English,
Malay and Mandarin, and what is interesting is that, unlike many other
plays since the advent of surtitles in the theatre, there is minimal
translation provided. Here, simply hearing the sounds of the different
languages is as important a part of the theatrical experience as comprehending
what each individual word means. After all, this is a play about the
blurring of lines between right and wrong, man and woman, the divine
and the earthly. Is it so surprising that we should experience this
breaking down of barriers in terms of language as well? It is to the
credit of the playwrights and directors that they do not take the conceit
so far that it reaches the point of frustration for the audience. Most
of the text is still in our lingua franca, English, and live translations
are usually provided where it matters. In fact, these occasional live
translations (as Shida speaks in Malay, for example, Xi recites the
same lines simultaneously in English) add considerably to the experience.
This lyrical overlapping offers a different metaphor: languages not
as clashing swords but as the winds beneath wings. It is interesting
to note, however, that no translations are offered for two of the stories
performed entirely in Mandarin but that the Malay story is punctuated
frequently with lines in English. If another idea behind the inclusion
of Mandarin and Malay text is to tear down the presumptuous tyrant that
is English, it is telling then that Mandarin is presented as just as
chauvinistic as English while the Malay language is more accommodating.
I'm not sure how conscious a decision this actually was by the
directors and playwrights but it was certainly something I found very
striking.
First Impression
Angel-ism reminds me a lot of The Necessary Stage's
godeatgod. Both plays riff on the theme of divine beings as
our guardians, and the natural human instinct to try and make sense
of why bad things happen in the world. Both also place a lot of emphasis
on the creation of strong visual images: most striking was a backlit
Helmi Fita with large silver wings, his mouth wide open in a silent
scream, his every muscle tense, and the words "good" and
"bad" scrawled across his chest, divided by a vertical line.
This script by playwrights Mohd Zulfadli Mohd Rashid and Danny Yeo,
however, is more pointed than godeatgod and specifies the context
of this multi-lingual piece as a multi-cultural Singapore where our
very own "guardian angel", a certain founding father, is imagined
to be at death's door. The play is rather rough around the edges
and flounders at times as it makes its way across a series of short,
largely unconnected scenes but there are enough moments of inspiration
(for example, "The Slap of God") to see the play through
and, on the whole, it strikes a nice balance between somber contemplation
and playful parody. |
"Angel-ism speaks so powerfully to us today because we continue
to live in a world that appears to be on the brink of violent collapse"
Credits
Playwrights: Mohd Zufadli Mohd Rashid and Danny Yeo
Directors: Aidli ‘Alin' Mosbit and Kok
Heng Leun
Set Designer: Najib Soiman
Lighting Designer: Kala Raman
Costume Designer: Serena Pang
Producer: Elnie S Mashari
Associate Producer: Molizah Mohd Mohter
Production Manager: Huang Xiangbin
Stage Manager: Nur Khairiyah
Assistant Stage Manager: Muhammad Hafidz
Technical Director: Helmi Fita
Production Coordinator: Athena Tan
Sound Operator: Junainah Yusoff
Video Operator: Salene
Lighting Operator: Ho Kian Tong
Cast: Helmi Fita, Xi Ai, Shida Mahadi, Rei Poh
Photography: Law Kian Yan
|
