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SINGAPORE : They have teamed up for 19 plays - often playing husband and wife or even son and mother - paired up for MediaCorp TV Channel 5's, Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd, and even appeared together on the silver screen alongside Chow Yun Fat and Jodie Foster in 1999's Anna and the King.
Now, real-life couple Lim Kay Siu, 51, and Neo Swee Lin, 43, are at it again, playing husband and wife in the latest W!ld Rice production of Blithe Spirit, which premieres 12 April 2007 at the National Library's Drama Centre Theatre.
Written by British playwright Noel Coward in 1941, Blithe Spirit features Kay Siu as a novelist in need of inspiration who invites a psychic (Selena Tan) to his Bukit Timah home in hopes that the experience will supply the premise for a new book.
What happens instead is that the ghost of his first wife (Tan Kheng Hua) materialises to scare him and his current wife, played by Swee Lin.
Between rehearsals for this, their second appearance together in the play after it was staged here in 2001, the couple sat down with TODAY to discuss the craft of acting, their 15-year marriage and the perils of spending so much time together both on and offstage.
Blithe Spirit is about love, marriage and living happily ever after. Is there such a thing or does it only exist in plays?
Lim Kay Siu: Blithe Spirit plays on this whole "I'll love you forever" notion. Here is a man who said "I love you" to two people, but he thinks it's okay because one of them is dead. On some level I think he wants to be a bigamist because his first wife comes back from the dead and he tells his current wife, why don't we all have fun together. My paternal grandfather actually did that. He used to play the field a lot so my grandmother decided to get him a concubine and they all lived under one roof.
Neo Swee Lin: I think bigamy is a no-no, not in this day and age. But in those days, I think in terms of his grandmother, she was just being very practical rather than playing the victim or having him go outside the house to look, bringing it back into the house so she could control it.
Coward wrote this play more than 60 years ago and, to this day, it resonates with people. Why is that?
LKS: Even though he wrote it in 1941, a lot of the sexual politics still apply: What men think of women, and what women think of men.
NSL: I'm not sure how true this is, but I think Coward was a bit of a misogynist: He does point at how women seem to manipulate men. In the play, women are so domineering, and in the end, he leaves both of them …
LKS: ...and he says "I'm free of both of you and I've never enjoyed myself before". There's an air of misogyny in his plays. It's like My Fair Lady, where there's that line that says: "Why can't a woman be like a man? Men are so decent." That kind of misogyny, that's present in the play.
You two met in 1986 when working on Dragon's Teeth Gate, where you (Swee Lin) played his (Kay Siu's) mother although he is seven years older. You played a mother and son again last year in Alfian Sa'at's Homesick. Does playing such roles ever strike you as odd?
NSL: Many people ask me why we don't have children, and I always tell them I don't need children lah, I have many already (laughs).
Recently, (actor) Robin Goh told me: "I don't think you're seen as having made it in theatre if you haven't played Swee Lin's child." Adrian Pang, Ivan Heng, Gurmit Singh and Pierre Png, Selena Tan, Pam Oei and Lim Kay Tong have been my "children". I lamented that fact. I asked them: "Are you all typecasting me?" Can I play younger characters, please? I've lost a lot of weight (laughs).
How did each of you get your start in theatre?
LKS: I flunked out of university doing biochemistry and genetics, came back and felt guilty because my father died in front of me.
I sold insurance for a bit, did finance, copywriting for advertising, but then got involved with TV. One day, we were filming auditions at TheatreWorks and after we had packed up, I decided I would audition as well. So I did, at 29, and never turned back.
I was lucky: I did badly in my first play, Be My Sushi Tonight, but because there were so few actors, I could keep acting and learning. There was no drama school then. The learning curve was very steep for me.
NSL: I've been acting since my convent school days. Even in kindergarten I was in the Christmas pageant. I did speech and drama from Primary 2, performed in The Merchant of Venice at the Victoria Theatre in Secondary 3, and did theatre on and off in Catholic Junior College.
I read law at the National University of Singapore where I met Ivan Heng and was exposed to all aspects of theatre. I tried advertising for six months after I graduated, but it was acting that attracted me.
What's it like working so closely together so often?
NSL: On TV and in films it's fine, but onstage it's close up, and more intimate and intense ...
LKS: Yes, we had a run up early on. We were in Glasgow, and Ivan was directing us in Ovidia Yu's The Woman in a Tree on a Hill, and there was a bit of an ego run up between us.
She thought I was being defensive and I think, in retrospect, I had been. I was so serious about my acting that I took suggestions badly, so my initial reaction to her saying I was defensive was to be defensive (laughs). But by then, I was in love with her, so I had to prioritise lah, and I decided acting had to come second to Swee Lin.
What's the strangest play you've both been in?
LKS: It's got to be last year's Cake Theatre production of Cheek, where we were husband and wife in a really weird sort of a way. I'm the murderous patriarch in a Greek tragedy and she plays the woman who kills herself. So it is husband and wife but very extreme.
You've both worked in TV, film and theatre. Which do you like best and what are the differences?
LKS: Film is really the medium that you can shine in. Theatre has a lot of preparation time so you have a whole unit of people working closely together that becomes a family. It's more separate in film, you don't get to know and love each other so much.
Is it true that just about anybody can act?
NSL: He's proof that anyone can act. (laughs)
LKS: And I believe so because I came to acting so late. Given the right guidance, anybody can do it.
With your talent and longevity, both of you are an inspiration to younger actors. What's your advice for them?
LKS: It's not about just doing a good show. Acting at its best is a study and a love for humanity. You're portraying humanity and that search is almost spiritual. You have to have compassion and love to play whatever character you're playing.
It's part of a life-long quest: Observing people and not judging them but viewing them with compassion.
NSL: If you think of yourself as an artist, then that's what you have to be. Respect and kindness is very important. As actors, you think about promoting yourself, marketing yourself, and you have to think about that, but self-promotion is not the main focus, rather it's your craft and the love and respect for your co-workers.
How well do you know each other? Can you, without thinking, say what each other's favourite food is?
LKS: Hers? Anything deep fried!
NSL: Donuts!
- TODAY/sh
What: Blithe Spirit
When: April 12-29 2007
Where: Drama Centre Theatre, National Library
Tickets from Sistic.
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