Everyone
loves this show. The Life! Theatre Awards named it Best Play of 2004,
and the 2006 encore performance just received a similarly rave review
by Kristina Tom of the Straits Times. In a year of festivities
celebrating the 600th anniversary of Admiral Cheng Ho's voyages,
this dramatic tribute to the famous Chinese explorer has managed to
retain its relevancy and freshness.
Furthest North, Deepest South has stood out primarily as one of the
first adult-centered productions of the Finger Players, who've
combined their puppetry arts with live action to produce a visually
distinctive, surreal style of drama. The night I attended, audience
members trotted out of the auditorium babbling in awe at the amazingly
believable chorus of seven scholar officials, played by three puppeteers
and their four life-size puppets. If you happen to be in Budapest, where
it's shortly going on tour, it's definitely worth the price
of a ticket.
But since everyone's praised this production to the sky, I think I
can justifiably use this review to dwell on its flaws. I watched the
Finger Players put on great stuff long before they aimed at grown-up
audiences - their Ne-zha of 2002 and 2004 was a particular
triumph - and consequently, while I was appreciative of this new visual
style, I wasn't taken aback. The physical command of Fanny Kee and Sim
Pern Yiau playing living puppets was impressive, but all things considered,
I've seen the company do more spectacular visual displays of puppetry
for the benefit of rugrats.
Rather, as a writer, I was struck by how the language of the script
was somewhat wanting in sophistication. Playwright Chong Tze Chien used
a largely straightforward, pared-down style of writing, striving less
for historical accuracy than a sense of timeless pantomime and universal
political allegory. Unfortunately, this meant that the same simple maxims
were uttered several times ("I am not a woman! I am a man!"
and "Laughter is the best medicine!") with uncomplicated
directness by Fanny Kee and with little variation, due to her portrayal
of Cheng-Ho as stuffed with stoic, upbeat pride and formality. The effort
to establish a metaphor between the subject matter and the Singapore
government's treatment of the arts further resulted in shifting,
irregular metonymy. First, the scholar officials were identified as
themselves actors and artists who had to be distracted from causing
trouble while Cheng-Ho, the scientist, went on his fact-finding mission.
Later, these same officials became the administrators who urged the
Emperor Zhu Di to dismiss his artist concubine and his admiral, as "We
have no time for artists and scientists". Still later, their hands
describing the remnants of their burnt palace, the scholars blame Zhu
Di, saying, "He has made mime artists out of us!" Such metaphors
were effective in eliciting laughs from the audience, but their inconsistency
made them resemble schoolboy jibes at a higher authority, lacking a
unified vision of the ideal.
This style of retelling the legend was further complicated by the
script's imaginative, if apparently incongruous flights of postmodern
fantasy - a testimony of evidence for Cheng-Ho's visits
to different continents, delivered by the contestants of a Miss Universe
pageant, or, most disorientingly, at the very opening of the play, the
encounter between a lost Cheng-Ho and the apparitions of Imelda Marcos
and Virginia Woolf. These bizarre moments, though initially unsettling,
were in retrospect some of the best parts of the play, striking both
visually and intellectually when you try to puzzle out their relevance.
I eventually parsed out my own interpretation of Marcos and Woolf -
feminine emblems of the tyranny of Zhu Di and the exploratory genius
of Cheng-Ho - though I won't claim this is the only possible
reading of those polysemous images. Ultimately, it seems that the Finger
Players is hatching a new style of storytelling as well, where pantomime
and po-mo may live side by side, provoking one another by their difference.
Scriptwise, there's still sharpening to do, however, as seen
in the dubious judgment of giving the play a new ending. Just when Cheng-Ho
drowns and is set to continue his voyages in a curiously modern spirit
world, the final line of the play punctures this open-endedness with
the banal statement, "He died at the age of 62."
However, Furthest North is already outstanding as a historical play
in Singapore simply for the freshness of its approach to the life of
Cheng-Ho, who's received dramatic treatments before in Singapore,
notably in Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and The Admiral's
Odyssey. This is the first work of theatre I've seen that's
forsaken the idealisation of his voyages as the beginnings of a global
Asian culture, choosing instead to focus on the grittier political aspects
of his biography. By highlighting the power play between him and his
master the Emperor Zhu Di, played marvelously by Sim, the greatness
of Cheng-Ho's journeys was challenged, the selfish imperial thrust
behind them is revealed, and the very value of such feats of glory questioned
within a bounded life.
I feel lucky to have witnessed at least one staging of this play,
not simply because it's well worth watching, but because I believe it
represents a new step in which small Asian theatres can develop. And
last year we saw, with the very differently configured Between
the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, that it's clear that the Finger
Players are developing. With roots in Chinese puppetry, the company's
been able to take a sledgehammer to an icon of Chinese history, and
has mixed the resultant pieces together with elements of contemporary
global consciousness. Their new creation is still wobbly, but its overall
public approval shows it to be a success. |
"I feel lucky to have witnessed at least one staging of this play,
not simply because it's well worth watching, but because I believe it
represents a new step in which small Asian theatres can develop"
Credits
Cast: Fanny Kee, Sim Pern Yiau, Gene Sha Rudyn, Kph
Leng Leng, Charlotte Chiew, Candice De Rozario, Wong Young Tseng, Ang
Hui Bin, Adrian Chong, Jo Kwek
Playwright/Set Designer: Chong Tze Chien
Director: Christina Sergeant
Production Manager: Joanna Goh
Puppet Designers/Conceptualists: Oliver Chong, Ong
Kian Sin
Lighting Design: Lim Woan Wen
Sound Design/Music: Darren Ng
Costume Design: Lim Chin Huat
Makeup Design: Makeup Forever
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