Journeying
On North Diversion Road would have been so much more enjoyable
if the trip had taken much less time. This could have been easily accomplished
by cutting out ten repetitive minutes from each of the ten individual
vignettes. That way, we would not have those languorous moments to ponder
where we were going and consider getting out of the car at the next
traffic light. But while monotony made On North Diversion Road
a bumpy ride, the destination was worth it.
There were ten different couples travelling on the road, each with
their own agendas but united by the fact that all the males in the relationship
had cheated on their female partners. I could tolerate this as the consistent
motif of the play, even if it was disappointing to find out every conflict
between the couple was due to the male's adultery.
What I could not tolerate was the completely unchanging scenarios each
vignette posed. Every time a scene unfolded, the couple began communicating
in one set fashion. These varied between vignettes (for example, cold
warring, incessant bickering and wailing), but within each vignette
there was no variety: the couples kept going at it without pause or
alteration. There was little, if any, evolution in the characters and
the situation. It was as if I were looking at paintings come to life
but forever re-enacting the one moment they were painted.
In The Orange Light the unhappy married couple played by Eleanor
Tan and Hang Qian Chou is stuck in a tedious screaming match. From the
beginning of the scene, the pair hurls insults at each other: she calls
his mother a bitch, so he calls her mother a bitch, so she calls his
grandmother a bitch, and on and on it goes. The verbal abuse becomes
increasingly and disturbingly explicit until, at the peak of their bickering,
Tan challenges Hang's wish that she "would just die" by opening
the door of the car they are travelling in and threatening to jump out.
But the chance to wring some compassion out of these two-dimensional
caricatures quickly slips by when Hang continues to taunt her regardless,
and Tan retreats into a defensive shell, promising never to die so she
can make the rest of his life miserable.
For the most part, the rest of the play made good on Tan's promise:
the scenes refused to die, and far too many of them shared Orange
Light's lack of character depth.
This flaw was rooted in the myopic interpretations of the scenes and
characters rather than the actors' inability. It was obvious that the
actors of young & W!LD are a dedicated bunch with the energy to
live up to their company name. When they had to bawl, they bawled their
eyes out, and when they had to giggle and play ditz, they giggled and
played ditz all the way. Vanessa Wong had the honour of such a performance
in The Steering Lesson. Yet for all the energy she channelled
into being "happy and bubbly like champagne", you could not help
but feel that her effort went to waste. She could have injected some
nuance into her character when she cheekily justified that if her husband
could “play hootsy-patootsy” with her mahjong playmate,
then she could let other men “play hootsy-patootsy” with
her too. Instead any wit in writer Tony Perez' script was largely lost
through her overacting. I could not tell if she would have been able
to give a more stirring performance had she had been directed to portray
her character with more depth. But I do know that the actors gave their
all and milked their characters for all they were worth, despite the
fact that many of the scenes offered repetitive lines and superficial
characters. At the very best their sketchy performances entertained
me, but as soon as their entertainment value was exhausted (and it was
exhausted very quickly) the rest of their scenes became dreary.
One scene that valued subtlety over cheap laughs was The Ride.
Unlike many of the other vignettes, this scene refused to give the plot
away with a simple one-liner like "You… You two-timer!"
There were, of course, hints: "Did you do item seven on the checklist?"
asks the woman. The succinct and meaningful lines were delivered with
conviction appropriate to the bespectacled, intellectual couple the
scene centred on - a couple that cherishes the ideal of fidelity, but
who are able to recognise that while the soul may be willing, the body
is often weak. The pair decide to move on with their lives without blame.
If anything, the wife shares the blame for her husband's act as they
make a final decision to endure the consequences together. One of the
first tender scenes in the play, The Ride lost none of its
depth to melodrama.
A reversal of this role of the merciful wife is seen in The Excursion.
From the darkness onstage, you hear a small voice begin a prayer. A
boy is praying for forgiveness for his infidelity. At the end of the
five-minute long prayer, the lights fade up to reveal the boy, hunched
and sorrowful, and the unforgiving woman beside him who ends his prayer,
and his life, with the gun in her hand. I was happy that here was finally
a piece that did not overstay its welcome, saying no more than it needed
to make its point, and making that point powerfully with that eerie
image of betrayed and vengeful love.
The Ride and The Excursion stood out not because
of exceptional acting (indeed, the acting standard in these two scenes
was lower than in some of the others), but because they were succinct
and shed fresh light on a subject made trite by constant repetition
throughout the rest of the evening.
The technical crew did marvellously in manipulating the lights to create
the time-passing effect of journeying through tunnels and past streetlamps.
Similarly the sound crew's uses of traffic noises were apt. Put together,
they engineered the languid ambience of being stuck in between destinations
while travelling on the road.
It worked, for me, because I mostly felt stuck in "the Waiting Place…
for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go, or a bus to come,
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants, or a wig with curls, or another
chance." (Doctor Seuss) In my case, I was waiting for some secret
stroke of brilliance to save the play.
There was one near the end of the play. The second-to-last scene offered
an illuminating perspective different from all the other vignettes:
it focused on a conversation between a man and his mistress. Tony, a
musician and Charmaine, his singer and confidante, are travelling to
a concert when Tony informs Charmaine of his decision to marry his girlfriend,
May. This triggers Charmaine's confession of her feelings for Tony and
her interrogation of his reasons for marrying May: she asks whether
it is "Because of social expectations? Is it security?" The play
seems to suggest that we ask ourselves the same questions, and compare
our own aspirations and compromises to those of the unhappy people in
the play - especially if, like Tony, we find ourselves answering "I
don't know."
The following scene served as an epilogue to this story, and saw a
desperate Tony seeking a cure for terminally ill May, to whom he has
now been married for 16 years, (and whom he has cheated on for god knows
how long). Having come to terms with her fate, May wants Tony to marry
Charmaine after her death; she not only knows of their relationship,
she allows it. No doubt she has been hurt by her husband's misdeeds,
but she has forgiven him because she loves him. Eleanor Tan showed she
was capable of a rousing performance as May and I believed in her marriage
to Tan Shou Chen enough to find my heart wrenched at the candour and
finality of their relationship.
There is a high price for travelling On North Diversion Road.
It is like taking a road trip - lots of waiting and bearing with discomfort
such as stomach aches and hunger until you reach a place that makes
you feel relieved and sated. These places are rare on the road, but
that makes them all the more treasured. As you travel the last few metres
to the end of the road, you find that the journey, like most journeys,
was worthwhile after all. |
"I mostly felt stuck in "the Waiting Place... for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go, or a bus to come, or a string of pearls,
or a pair of pants, or a wig with curls, or another chance."
Credits
Director: Jonathan Lim
Playwright: Tony Perez
Producer: Tonnoy Trickett
Set Design: Young & W!ld
Lighting Designer: Kala Raman
Young & W!ld Company: Jasmine Koh, Leslie Tay,
Isabella Chiam, Terence Tan, Eleanor Tan, Hang Qian Chou, Daphne Ong,
Candice de Rozzario, Vanessa Wong, Ghazali Muzakir, Jonathan Lum, Judy
Ngo, Tan Shou Chen and Audrey Luo
|
