Category: Review

I can’t decide who I like better. Baobao’s or Zai’s.

Baobao’s piece was easy to understand. Well, maybe I am quite used to her style of presentation so I know what she wants to show when she does certain things. And the baby part just seems so familiar. Maybe she’s done something like this before, maybe it’s so much her style. But what I feel was not enough about her performance is that she could have pushed the audience more. There were certain parts where I felt a tug at my heart but it stopped at that. If Baobao went further, it would have made me cry. The emotion would have been deeper and I would have felt more for the piece. I like the comic relief and the sound bites though. It’s a good bite at those silly things politicians say about the Iraq war. However, the audience was a bit too cold. I mean, some of us felt that the MacDonald’s & Coca-cola parts were really funny, as well as the “It’s nothing like show business” song & politician part. But the only people who laughed or even giggled were me, Melvin, Yati & Seok Ai. Well, maybe those at the top did but WTH..

On the other hand, Zai’s piece was really abstract. He started off the piece by flashing a slideshow of the poem “To the Reader” by Charles Baudelaire. Then all he did was walk around the stage, went on the platform and basically moved in ultra slow-motion, sometimes smashing chairs, sometimes snarling and growling, sometimes romoving his clothes and touching himself. It made absolutely no sense at all iitially. The only thing was that the sound was deafeningly loud and because I was sitting near the sub-woofers, the bass made my heart thump ever so terribly. I swore my eardrums would burst if I sat there for another 15mins. I kept waiting. Waiting for him to do something. To show me some meaning of what he is doing. Anything at all. At the end of his piece, he finally went to the pot, which had water dripping into it from the grids and the sound captured with a condensor, took it up and drak the water that was dripping from the top. Then Yuen Chee Wai came over, both took off their belts and all he did was to drop the metal part into the pot, making a very loud and crisp sound. But the ending slideshow came and I finally understood what he was doing. He was simply re-enacting all that was written in the poem. And the root of all evil, it seems, is not money. It simply is BOREDOM.

Thanks to Mel who accompanied me to watch this amazing performance. And hello to Yati who I met there. Damn. Forgot to get hp number. Well, we’ll meet again. And hi again to Seok Ai, Kong Hui, Catherine, Heng Leun, Simin & KC whom I met there. ^__^

Watched Dangerous Liaisons by Toy Factory on Sat night.

What can I say. The show was, in my opinion, not very up to the standard of the original play itself. Plus, having watched the movie version by Glenn Close & John Malkovich, the theatre version is really very much too obvious and rather bland. I feel that Beatrice has put too much emphasis on the sexual part and lost the inuancies and intricacies of the plot and dialogue. Mark & Andrea, I feel, had not brought out the struggle of the characters, which made their final decisions and actions not clear on the motives. But one thing which is really captivating is the performance of Tan Kheng Hua. Although I felt that she could have done more and kept more subtlety instead of showing too much emotions in her voice and posture, overall she was much better than the other two leads.

Mota’s costume was breathtaking. I heard from Shiyun that he can make very good costume with very low budget. Which basically means mainly DIY. Imagine hand-sewing all the costumes.. My goodness. I wish I had some pictures to show but too bad I don’t.

Kudos to Boon Teck’s set too, though its not as good as Mad Phoenix, it’s better than many many many other set designers’ works.