Everything
But The Brain rewards an attentive audience – the more you
pay attention, the more you get out of it. Its basic premise is that
of a 36-year old physics teacher, Elaine Tan, dealing with her elderly
father’s physical deterioration and death. It starts off as a
whimsical fairytale where a loving daughter extrapolates Einstein’s
theory of relativity to slow down time and live happily ever after with
her father, until reality destroys the dream when Elaine’s father
has stroke after stroke and eventually dies. But this isn’t a
sad play, or even a moralistic one. Its tone is playful but dignified,
and its focus is really on the intimate relationship between father
and daughter.
Throughout the play, the clock marks the minutes in the last year
of the father’s life. The clock counts down with ruthless imprecision
(time being, after all, relative), worsening illness and dashing Elaine’s
romantic aspirations with a young doctor on a whim. A stroke of the
clock is juxtaposed with a life-sapping medical stroke for Elaine’s
father. Time implies ageing for single girl Elaine as well, “fine
wine turning into vinegar” as she denies herself the pursuit of
sensual pleasure.
But even though time wins the battle, physics (a shared passion that
symbolises the bond between father and daughter) seems to win the war.
Elaine’s “theory of relativity” is a variation of
her father’s teaching of Einstein, a concept introduced to a 6-year
old Elaine while on a train to Malacca. Her father used the three bears
to illustrate the concept of relativity, but I’m not going to
explain it because it would be a spoiler (and I still don’t quite
understand it). Elaine’s conclusion is therefore that her father
can beat time if she puts him on a train to Malacca. But this is the
fairytale part of the story. In real life, father and daughter make
the best of their last moments together as life slips away. When her
father dies, Elaine comes to terms with it by keeping her father’s
brain in a Tupperware – presumably as a tribute to her father’s
intellectual legacy.
The script was complemented by beautiful performances from Pamela Oei
(Elaine) and Gerald Chew (Elaine's father), who reprised their roles
from the 2005 run. Oei was completely lovable as Elaine, the devoted
daughter whose intelligence and self-awareness placed her squarely within
a pantheon of modern heroines. Oei also showed us the comic, sad, and
luminously human aspects of Elaine’s situation. Just when Oei’s
character started to disappear into a bland goody-two-shoes mould, Oei
gave us a reason to embrace Elaine for being exactly like us. In an
incongruously cheesy moment, the handsome young doctor whom Elaine had
a crush on bolted when he realised that she was his secondary school
physics teacher, not classmate. Elaine snapped, and her rabid calculations
of the doctor's age, her crushing conclusion that she was a good 9 years
too old for him, and her ensuing rant about the plight of singles, were
played to the comedic hilt by Oei.
Chew, as well, was pitch-perfect as the genteel intellectual obsessed
with physics and a little clueless about handling the complexities of
a daughter. Exquisitely sensitive acting gave Elaine's father the vulnerability
and stubbornness of a man who, growing weak, still wants to play the
role of protector to his daughter. Perhaps Chew’s dignified ponderousness
could have been more lively, more varied at times, such as during the
flashbacks to his youth, but this is a tiny quibble. Chew’s studied
nature, unchanging through the passage of time, also highlighted the
point that his personal intellectual legacy would endure through time,
conquering time just as his daughter had planned.
Like a well-balanced painting, the supporting cast melded seamlessly
with the two central characters; Timothy Nga with his TV-host looks
and earnest cast, for example, seemed tailor-made for the role of the
handsome doctor. I also enjoyed the three bears who were a mix of physical
comedy and insinuating sprites.
But while the play was engaging, clever and relevant, it lacked a deeper
emotional resonance that was needed for us to be wholeheartedly convinced
of the special, magical bond between Elaine and her father. The moments
that did this most effectively were few and surprisingly mundane, for
instance when Elaine's father nagged her about her stagnant love life,
and when Elaine struggled with her father's convalescent diet, his adult
diaper, etc. Perhaps the constant insertion of themes and metaphors
(which gave the script its richness as a literary work) clouded those
moments onstage that most eloquently illustrated the closeness of the
everyday interactions between Elaine and her father. In one late scene
where Elaine held up a physics book to her father in bed and read to
him, both of them aware that his mind could no longer understand its
concepts, even the best acting could not absolve the scene of saccharine
sentimentality.
I am also inclined to think that there was too much telling and not
enough showing, in particular of how the father-daughter relationship
blossomed during Elaine’s growing up years. A major turning point
occurred during a flashback when Elaine's father told six-year old Elaine
that her mother had left the family for good. He then informed us that
Elaine had a year-long mental breakdown as a child, and that he had
taken a year off work to care for Elaine (a parallel to Elaine later
taking a year off work to care for her father). As this was being narrated
by Chew, however, Oei sat on a swing with her head bowed, her expression
hidden. There was no showing of the sacrifice by Elaine's father, no
touching demonstration of how they both overcame their pain to find
strength in each other. In fact, the scenes involving a six-year old
Elaine with her young father involved mostly crying and tension. Elaine’s
adulthood love for physics testified to the eventual success of her
father’s parenting, but having not witnessed the process, we are
a little less moved by the idea that she was the only “constant”
in the endless equations in which her father spent his life searching
for answers.
The happy Hallmark-style ending seemed rushed, and I must have missed
the point when Elaine decided she would be able to accept losing her
father if she could keep his brain. The choice of a big, bright blue
Tupperware as an ostentatious brain storage container was morbidity
in candy colours. Set within a nursery schoolroom setting, the play
went to a bizarre place for a nanosecond before it ended.
I greatly enjoyed the fine actors and the robust script, and how the
light-hearted whimsies and grim realities in the play ultimately came
together in an absorbing tale of love, sacrifice and loss. But perhaps
the inevitable hype created a recipe for inflated expectations which
might have built up Action Theatre's production of Everything But
the Brain even beyond the capabilities of its script and actors.
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"I greatly enjoyed the fine actors and the robust script, and how
the light-hearted whimsies and grim realities in the play ultimately
came together in an absorbing tale of love, sacrifice and loss."
Credits
Producer and Artistic Director: Ekachai Uekrongtham
Director: Samantha Scott-Blackhall
Playwright: Jean Tay
Production Manager: Tan Lay Hoon
Production Designer: Thoranisorn Pitikul
Lighting Designer: Suven Chan
Sound Designer: Darren Ng
Makeup: Cosmoprof
Hair Designer: Ashley Lim
Stage Manager: Cheryl Ho
Costume Coordinator: Vivianne Koh
Sound Operator: Koo Ching Long
Cast: Gerald Chew, Pam Oei, Timothy Nga, Benjamin Ng, Serene Chen, Coral
Anne Tong
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