0.01 is the second installment of Cake Theatrical Productions’ current Decimal Points series of experimental works helmed by non-theatre directors.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first one, Brian Gothong Tan’s cinema/theatre mash-up 4.44. Despite its rough edges, I had the impression I was watching something quite new, its language felt particularly fresh and innovative.
But after watching 0.01 (which is already sold out), I’m wondering if the point of the DP series isn’t so much as a platform to showcase experimental work (in the context of Cake’s already experimental body of works) as it is a platform for artists to simply experiment. I’m nitpicking here because while first-time director and full-time designer David Lee falls under the latter, the work itself isn’t quite the former.
In fact, I would have to say that that 0.01 seems very much like a trademark Cake play, containing many of the ingredients we’ve come to expect from the group’s works: hints of madness, perversion, and the confessional; touches of kinetic theatre; the odd song; the dark humour. Yet despite all of these, it doesn’t really take off.
Plot-wise, you have a twisted coming-of-age tale of sorts – young boys who go to school, discover their sexuality, gets punished for it and… later go for National Service. There are “slay the father” type proclamations, a litany of woes against authority, et cetera. “You haven’t seen the underground cells!” whispers a terrified boy. “Oh, but I have,” says one male authority figure, before kissing the hapless kid on the lips.
It’s the deviant, gritty sort of world you’d expect Cake artistic director Natalie Hennedige to write into being – and she did.
Whose voice, then, emerges from 0.01? I’m not quite sure. Admittedly, unlike, say Tan — who simply has to reconfigure certain things, being a film director as well – Lee is more entrenched in the (static/predominantly two-dimensional/passive) world of design. It’s very clear in the aesthetic organisation of 0.01 – the predominantly white motif, the clean lines, etc – the whole look and feel of it is solid.
In fact everything seemed quite okay. I loved how it was presented, the videos, the sound design, and, in any other context, the script was equally provocative.
I guess my confused reception of this piece can be is summed up in one particular moment – a suicide that was predictable and yet visually stimulating. The raised right arm of the boy simulating a hanging, yet at the same time seemed like a victorious gesture. Image-wise, powerful irony, yet it was preceded by a plot twist seen a mile away.
The one thing I’m really disappointed with, however, is the choreography. Unless I missed out on some kind of self-conscious ironic subtext being played out, it mostly doesn’t gel with everything else – particularly in the drawn-out melodramatic moments. Kudos to the young performers (another plus point is Lee’s decision to take a risk with relative newbies) but the moves were rather jarring. Considering we’ve been weaned on a kind of Cake self-reflexivity, I’m not sure whether I’m more uncomfortable with the rather outdated set of moves or the sincerity of its execution.
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