Seeing as your Resident Art-Throb hasn’t done any “scorecard” or “goosebump” reviews lately, I’m introducing another segment in For Art’s Sake!
And I’m taking a leaf from the respectable online theatre site Flying Inkpot’s First Impressions. Hope you don’t mind guys!
I’m still negotiating with my bosses on what to call it. You see, my original title had something to do with hands and the assumption – among the more cynical-minded at least – that critics are basically w****rs. Heh.
Instead, for now, I shall dub thee Talk To The Hand. Very `90s, I know.
Had a rather well-rounded arts weekend, having caught a play (Cake’s Cuckoo Birds), a “dance” piece (TheatreWorks’ Memory), a visual art exhibition (Ming Wong’s Life And Death In Venice) and a movie (Sherman Ong’s Memories of a Burning Tree).
And to be honest, I was planning to write something more substantial and intertextual – connections kept piling up and certain thematic and performative aspects kept resonating as I went from one to another.
But I’m also spending some time playing Xabi Alonso on my handheld console so… nah.
Hey, it’s a weekend. Or what’s left of it, that is.
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CUCKOO BIRDS
ON ONE HAND…
This Cake-Five Arts Centre black comedy collaboration revolving around the various permutations of violence here (maid abuse) and in Malaysia (criminality, religious fundamentalism, animal abuse) at times doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be the theatrical equivalent of a filmic omnibus or portmanteau because certain segments in the piece seemed to insist on a kind of resolution – as a part 2 or part 3 appear just when you thought it has moved on. Thereby taking the steam out of what I had expected to be a crazy piece that simply flows (or jars you) as you move from one scene to the other.
ON THE OTHER HAND…
It’s got the amazing Jo Kukathas. More of her in Singapore theatre please! And despite that minor gripe above, it was still the full-on sensory mindf**k that you’d pleasantly expect from Cake – biting lyricism wrapped in ultra-OTT-retro-psychedelic-surreal-fantastical scenarios that alternated between the funny and the furious and the downright bizarre. And a lot of it was powerfully clear too (yes, even those who “don’t get” Cake would have had a clear handle on this one).
Cuckoo Birds also had the most the most in-your-face and honest exposition of the “maid issue” that I’ve seen onstage here. None of the stereotypes or bwa-ha-ha caricatures everyone’s accustomed to. And neither did it veer into drama. Instead it was a vicious warning to employers one and all of what could possibly happen when they take it too far.
Oh, and the entire production was an exercise in, well, exercising. It seemed like they were getting a full work-out every single time. The ingenuous set was self-contained four-walled plastic “container” on a raised platform stage riddled with trapdoors. All four performers would come in and out of these platforms.
How on earth did they do all those quick costume changes beneath the waist-high stage? Lying down?!
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MEMORY
ON ONE HAND…
It had a beautiful set. Like Cuckoo Birds, it was, for the most part, a self-contained one. But with a huge mosquito net unto which documentarist Wu Wenguang’s various video components (animation, lines, real-life interviews) was projected. Inside the mosquito net, a woman was “sewing” paper on her sewing machine and another inched her way to the forefront while bending backwards in an excruciatingly slow manner (that is, for the entire show) – both moments of which I really liked. (Although I’m not sure which of the two was the choreographer Wen Hui).
ON THE OTHER HAND…
Despite its visual beauty and, arguably, loose, erm, stitching together of the many elements, it seemed distanced. It’s basically Wen Hui’s memories of her life as a dancer during the Cultural Revolution in China. And while some of them were rather poignant, I felt detached for the most part – because the piece seemed detached from its subject matter as well. What was its stance towards the Cult Rev? Was it traumatic ala how intellectuals were persecuted by rabid young Maoists? Not at all. Was it something like how Cynical Realists/Political Pop visual artists treated Mao and Maoist iconography? Well, it milked the iconography and the cliches for all its worth but not really. Was it celebratory? Unless I dozed off at some point, I couldn’t recall it being so.
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LIFE AND DEATH IN VENICE
ON ONE HAND…
Ming Wong’s new video work is his usual “I-dress-up-and-act-as-the-characters-in-the-movie” MO and the 16-minute work (and not the entire “remake” of Visconti movie Death In Venice, which for some reason what I had assumed it to be) is just as lovely as the others. The two-channel video work shows Wong doing his Dirk Bogarde impressions on one screen and the young Bjorn Andreson in another – and if you sit in the middle, it’s like you’re watching some kind of tennis match of love. Love. Geddit? Guffaw!
Two other things – once you’ve gotten past the idea of Wong portraying the two characters (which was admittedly amusing in previous works) it’s just so beautifully, narcissistically sublime. Also, I found it interesting that for an artist whose works are highly referential, the works from the Venice Biennale that the two characters walk into in some kind of time-space warp are ironically not credited. (Like I said, I have a lot more to say, but Xabi Alonso beckons).
ON THE OTHER HAND…
There were no seats in the rather awkward space of Hermes Gallery. Some people may like how there were a lot of mirrors, but personally, I preferred just following what was going on from two main screens opposite each other. And the exhibit ends in May 2. Which means it only overlaps with the SAM exhibition of his actual Venice Biennale entry Life of Imitation (again, interestingly enough, the only work he references in Life And Death In Venice – wah so many layers meaning, man!) for about a week.
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MEMORIES OF A BURNING TREE
ON ONE HAND…
Sherman Ong’s newest feature film under the Singapore International Film Festival (and previously commissioned by the Rotterdam Film Festival) has moments that can be considered slow, excessive or indulgent. I know, I know. I also hate the phrase “too slow” or “too long” when talking about a movie. (Oh, you demanding Hollywood-fed Singaporean cineaste, you slay me!). But I had a hearty, carb-loaded lunch before I watched the 2pm screening.
ON THE OTHER HAND…
It was good. Have you seen his Singapore Biennale 2008 piece Flooding In The Time of Drought? It has that same rambling, meandering, documentary-ish tone and detailed, rigorous discipline in creating static but beautiful mise en scene but waaaaay shorter and set in Africa with African performers. It follows a set of interesting characters with their respective sub-plots (a man in search of his mother’s grave, a man wooing another woman with promises of a house, etc etc).
There were some questions during the brief post-screening talk about what this-and-that scene was all about and what it meant. Why can’t we just enjoy movies on the level of fleeting impressions, open-ended narrative mini-sketches and powerful imagery? Memories Of A Burning Tree had all those what.
Okay, signing off. I’ve got to score some goals for Liverpool. Yeah, I know, I’m still playing FIFA 09.
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