Reimagining History of the Holocaust

My review of

Starring Hitler As Jekyll And Hyde by The Finger Players

"The frequent shadow play by Lim is intriguing with the actors performing in stylised and puppet-like movements, and providing narratives that drive the plot behind a white screen. Behind the screen, Julius Foo effectively adopts a sarcastic tone and pitch as Mrs Stevenson, the elegant and arrogant art critic who finds fault in Jekyll’s art works to comic effect. In other scenes, he also plays the commissioner with impeccable comic timing in his interactions with the other officers, providing comic relief to the serious theme.

Edith Podesta plays Eva Braun, a blind art sponsor, with a depth of charged emotions. She delivers her crafty lines with a keen ear for the rhythms inherent in them.

While Starring Hitler as Jekyll and Hyde is a witty script superimposed on the contemporary political and social state of Singapore, it ultimately feels like we are presented with an art lesson articulating the key discourses from the art history."

Full review can be found here: http://centre42.sg/starring-hitler-as-jekyll-and-hyde-by-the-finger-players/
 

The Malay Man and His Chinese Father by Akulah Bimbo Sakti (A Review)

"In this staging, the Chinese father (Michael Tan) and Malay son (Yazid Jalil) are played by the same actors as the first. However, one prominent element which is missing is Asnida Daud vocally accentuating the helpless states of the characters, and suggesting the presence of the wife’s “ghost”. The presence of this “ghost” throws the contrast in ethnicity into sharper relief.

While the character development and psychological narrative of the father and son are much more detailed and layered in this realistic rendering, the contrasting ethnicity is downplayed in this staging. Nonetheless, I am not suggesting this piece is any less enjoyable.

I savour this work with disconcerting relish. The speechless and cyclic representation of life reminds me of film director’s Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’Amour. But this show is much more repressed and dysfunctional, as the world of the father and son is contained within a two-room flat."

Full review can be found here: http://centre42.sg/the-malay-man-and-his-chinese-father-by-akulah-bimbo-sakti/
 

Review of Sandaime Richard by Hideki Noda & Ong Keng Sen

A game of throne: Cultural bytes, digital bits 

"Sandaime Richard, written by Hideki Noda and directed by Ong Keng Sen, is a bold encounter with works of William Shakespeare. It introduces Shakespeare (Doji Shigeyama) into the play as a character put on a trial for falsifying history of Richard the Third (Kazutaro Nakamura).  Inspired by the War of the Roses, the fight of an ikebana clan is depicted. The story is also staged in the framework of a Zen paradigm. This results in texts which suggest the non-duality of things, a minimalist set design, and repetitive patterns of multimedia images.

Each performer plays different characters. It is presented on a bare stage which is transformed into a series of digital images by Keisuke Takahashi. This creates a sense of a cyberspace, complemented with electronic music by Toru Yamanaka. The audience is thus put in a trance-like state, while the characters seem to be modified, re-edited, intertextualised and cross-referenced with the convenient use of editing technology.

In this induced digital world, the characters from Shakespeare’s texts are dressed in white surrealistic and futuristic costumes designed by Yanaihara Mitsushi. They are like avatars reprogrammed to take on changing identities or one that is faceless. In this flux, they challenge history, traditions and assumptions. Multimedia images such as the continuous feathers which endlessly fall on the characters and the circular shapes that sustained the scenes remind one of the cyclic existence of life."

Full review can be found here: http://centre42.sg/sandaime-richard-by-hideki-noda-and-ong-keng-sen/