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SINGAPORE: How do you know if a play is a success? Is it the number of tickets sold? The duration of a standing ovation? The fact that a friend who absolutely loathes theatre suddenly decides to watch it?
In my humble opinion, it’s none of the above.
That’s because: a) numbers are reserved for auditors, b) you can’t trust that Singaporeans will actually stand up and clap, and c) that person does not exist.
Instead, I’ve recently discovered an alternative way of looking at what makes a play tick.
It has nothing to do with whether it “moves” you or makes you “think”, and everything to do with memorable images.
You know, the “moment” that lingers in your mind well after the actors have taken a bow.
The recently-concluded OCBC Singapore Theatre Festival was the perfect opportunity to test this theory out. After three weeks, I had watched eight of the 13 original plays on offer from six local theatre groups. I had done the requisite 10-minute post-show rave or rant about the directing or acting.
But it’s most likely that by next week, such lengthy observations will have been condensed and filed neatly away into their respective folders: “excellent”, “not bad”, “so-so” and “terrible”.
That, however, won’t change the fact that I remember some more vividly than others, thanks to some outstanding images which caught my attention and which have now taken up semi-permanent residency in my brain:
"Apocalypse: LIVE!" irked me a lot, although I have to admit Gene Sha Rudyn as the Malay general standing menacingly amid the rubble was eerie and powerful.
In comparison, I can’t remember a single scene from "angel-ism", which I seem to recall had something much more exciting to say.
I had unfortunately caught a not-so-great matinee performance of "The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles", but I must say I did perk up every time the huge Rafflesia flower character stepped on stage. It was a brilliant image — especially when said flower later picks a fight with the statue of Raffles.
But sometimes, an image doesn’t have to be so in-your-face to be effective. Take the a scene in "Just Late", put on by Magdalena (Singapore), where a blind, suicidal old man stands on the ledge of a flat, while a thief/clown who’s afraid of heights desperately clings to his trousers.
But the best images at this year’s festival has to be from three weeks ago, when I saw "The Swordfish, Then The Concubine" and the double-bill "Tree/House". I’ve still got a clear image of Rodney Oliveiro as that crazy-looking one-eyed general in "Swordfish", ridiculously urging his troops on with a whistle. I remember "spell#7’s" Paul Rae lying down on his back with a tree sticking out of his puffed-up belly in Tree Duet. And I can’t forget the barrage of movie footage of houses being demolished in Ho Tzu Nyen’s "House of Memory".
Which goes to show, image can sometimes be everything. - TODAY/sh
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