dimanche, janvier 11, 2004 I'm quite tired, and I know I should sleep because there's church tomorrow, and it's a full week of rehearsals for Poetry In The Flesh (Pt I) next week, plus french, but I'd better write about luna-id's The Lover and The Dumb Waiter before everything goes clean out of my mind.First things first: should you watch it? Is it worth the $30 bucks? Is it worth risking getting caught for asking your school-going friend to buy you a ticket at $22? Yes, yes and yes. I really enjoyed this production - mainly because it was Pinter - but I was pleasantly surprised that luna-id hadn't butchered the script, nor given the set a more modern interpretation. Although they did promise pure Pinter, but you know cynical me, I didn't really believe them, so I watched without any expectations. Apparently that's the way to go.  The first thing that strikes you when the curtains go up and the stage lights on, is the sheer amount of stuff that's on stage. They had these 1m wide wooden partitions which looked like ladders reaching all the way to the top of the stage. They had a queen-sized bed, with a real mattress. A couch. A coffee table. A vanity table with mirror. Two cabinets. A door. And many, many metres of folds of cloth, which served as curtains and partitioning room walls. Suddenly, Tan Kheng Hua bustles in, and starts fussing with the newspapers. (Real-life) Husband Lim Yu-Beng walks in, and he starts fussing about with his coat and tie. Kheng Hua pours coffee into the mugs, and then walks over to the sofa, and bends over to neatly lay a bunch of magazines on the coffee-table, giving the audience a down-her-blouse peek. All this done in 5 minutes of silence, the audience wondering: "When is whatever, if anything, happening?" There begins the mindf**k that is The Lover. For those who don't know, The Lover is about a husband and a wife. The husband knows the wife has a lover, and the wife knows the husband has a mistress. The twist: the husband is the lover, and the wife is the mistress. Fun huh? Make-believe and fantasy games made weirdly voyeuristic, because what's to say that Yu-Beng and Kheng Hua don't play these games at home? The interval allowed for a set-change - or rather, a set-reconfiguration for The Dumb Waiter. Elegant English apartment transformed into a dingy basement drippy-looking place, with all the stuff that was in the apartment strewn around like debris. Not too bad a change, except that the props, especially the wooden ladder-like partitions, spoke too loudly over the action in The Dumb Waiter. It got a little distracting, and made the actors look a little cramped: because of the ladder-partitions and the other strewn stuff, they were limited to moving around on three little islands of space between the beds, the toilet, and the dumb waiter. Perhaps a little more space (just a little more) would have been nice. However, I have to say that the partitions created an opportunity for the lighting designer to play about with very interesting shadows. Lots of eerily-coloured lighting from off-centre, and lots of shadow-play and light movement (used often to show the passing of time) gave the production just that little twist more. Rather unfortunately, the dumb waiter itself also could have been positioned a little better - if you were sitting facing stage right, the dumb waiter would be hidden from your view because it was placed at a 90deg angle to the audience, effectively preventing about half the audience from seeing it. Other than my bugbears with the rather cluttered set, the production was really great - Lim Yu Beng, Tan Kheng Hua and Gerald Chew: fantastic stuff. I especially take my hat off to Yu Beng for memorising all those lines - two Pinter plays! That's some personal achievement. And an unadapted script! Hip-hip-hooray! Some other random thoughts: - The box labelled "boxing gloves" sitting behind Gerald Chew in The Dumb Waiter was a little distracting. - What's with Kheng Hua and Yu-Beng lighting up half a pack of cigarettes in The Lover? Kheng Hua doesn't even look like she's really enjoying the smoke. (Shao was traumatised by the sheer decadent waste of cigarettes.) - The man in front of me had a really large head, which blocked my view of centre-stage, resulting in me TOTALLY MISSING the part where Lim Yu-Beng and Gerald Chew shift from being bumbling idiots to trained, professional killers. Whoever this man is, I hope he gets seats where he doesn't block views the next time, or something. - HOW IN THE WORLD DID THEY GET SO MANY SPONSORS?!? Their pre-show "please turn off your handphones and pagers" was recited was a long litany of people they had to thank, including: Official TV Station: Arts Central Official Restaurant: Coq n Bull Official Hair Salon: Action Hair Salon Official Suits: National Tailor Official Magazine: IS Mag Official Make-up: Cosmoprof Official Printer: Print at Work Official Photography: Cactus Studio Official Ticketing Agent: Sistic Official Stunts and Effects: The Stunt Production Singapore The last time I heard so many "official"s mentioned was... never! I've never heard so many "official"s before! - Ooh, the programme is printed in two-colour: black and pink. Save on cost, looks nice. That's about it. My verdict: go watch it! It's been treated with L'oreal: it's worth it. [The Lover and The Dumb Waiter] |
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