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SINGAPORE: After appearing in many English newspapers worldwide, cartoon character "Alex" is coming to life on stage in Singapore.
"Alex", a British cartoon strip about yuppie Alex, a city-dwelling, money loving investment banker, first appeared in UK newspapers in the 1980s and 20 years on, the cartoon character has been given a new lease of life.
Celebrated stage and screen actor Robert Bathurst, the only real actor in "Alex - Live on Stage", plays the title character.
The whole idea emerged as merely a “fun” thing to do. Producer Eleanor Lloyd said, “We thought, well, Alex’s very popular. We wanted to see how he would work in real life.” It finally came through when the team met video designers who helped turn it into a reality.
Bathurst said working with animated characters a “pretty strange” experience, “I have to interact with the cartoons. I speak to the cartoons, I speak as the cartoons, (and) I have dialogues essentially with myself. (And) I have to speak to the audience, so it’s like a three-way split.”
Having to use different mediums on stage, Bathurst cited this as his "most challenging job ever". "I’m responsible for all these different characters, and also to try and sort of get it across to the audience. To get the audience to sort of engage in their imagination enough to believe that these cartoon characters are as real as I am," the actor said.
Though Alex is a yuppie in the cartoon strip, the one on stage is in his late 40s.
“The writers are very clever. They made the decision very early on that Alex would age in real time. So, as the cartoon is going on, he had a baby, and his baby is now 17. So he’s gone through his life as time has gone on, so actually, he’s kept up with changing times,” said Lloyd.
“They (the writers) e-mail us new lines every few days, to make sure that it’s going to be relevant. Generally, we found it’s become more relevant since we first did it a year ago, and it’s become even more relevant to people’s lives. The economy is on the front page rather than just in the business section on the newspapers. People are very aware of investment bankers and what they do, and what impact they’ve had. So suddenly, we’re right in the middle of it. We’re kind of breaking news,” she added.
Though jokes from the comic strip are used in the production, those who are not familiar with "Alex" will enjoy it just the same. Said Bathurst, “You don’t actually need to know the strip in order to enjoy the play, strangely. You just see this person having a terrible time. Audiences like seeing people have terrible time.”
As the set uses different mediums, the likelihood of technical glitches is higher than the normal productions. Lloyd joked, “You keep your fingers crossed!”
“Relying on the computer is not an ideal way to exist but yes, we’ve got backups. We’re talking about an enormous amount; we’ve got 13 computers with us.”
Dubbing Alex the “Indiana Jones of corporate finance”, Bathurst said, “There are all these awful, awful disasters and you start wondering if he’s ever gonna get out of them.”
“Alex - Live on Stage” plays at Jubilee Hall at the Raffles Hotel on October 2 and 3. Tickets are available from SISTIC.
- CNA/sl
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