{"id":27801,"date":"2006-06-17T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-17T09:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27801"},"modified":"2024-07-04T13:57:05","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T05:57:05","slug":"unequal-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2006\/06\/unequal-partnership\/","title":{"rendered":"Unequal Partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

Are double bills the fashion nowadays?\nDirected by up-and-coming 20-year old director Goh Fung Shuan, Noise\nPerformance House’s double bill Brothers.\nBeloved<\/em> kicked off to a colourful and flamboyant start with Brothers<\/em>. A coming-of-age tale of two\norphan boys, not actually brothers, who leave their welfare home on a journey\ninto the world, Brothers<\/em> explores the\ncomplexities of friendship. Yan (Tan Kah Leong) and Qin (Goh Chuan Xuan) at\nfirst head off to nowhere in particular, guided only by the North Star and the\nabstract hope that they will at the end of the journey “see the\nlight”. Whatever that is. It\u2019s fifteen-year-old Yan’s bright idea really.\nAs far as 12 year-old Qin is concerned, he is merely tagging along. Yet as they\njourney through dreamlike worlds where reality is obscured by a fine mist of\nfantasy, the boys undergo a complete reversal of roles: Yan wants to go home\nwhile Qin develops a psychotic obsession with the North Star. Dark\nundercurrents are hinted at beneath the veil of childish innocence the two\norphans wear. Layers are built, walls of cynicism; but when peeled,\nvulnerability is exposed. The surface of their friendship are repeatedly\ncracked and cemented, cracked and cemented. Yet with all the emotional\nacrobatics going on, Brothers<\/em> keeps\nits Dahl-ish veneer of childishness firmly on, grasping tightly at its core —\nthe complex, beautiful comradeship between two individuals. Different, yet\nsimilar. Beautiful, yet sinister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What Brothers<\/em>? More like Brokeback<\/em>,”\nsaid someone in the Ladies’ during interval. Granted, the boys are prone to\nprofessing undying devotion to each other (a la “We’ll always be together,\nI will always be here for you”) and the conflicts they face stir up\nmemories of my own which I would have preferred remain buried, yet I wouldn’t\ncall the Yan\/Qin connection Brokeback<\/em>.\nIn fact, I don’t think Brothers<\/em>\ndescribes them suitably either. They are friends, students, teachers, brothers,\nguides. To give such a relationship a label would be an injustice. Why define\nit, give it a fixed identity, lock it in stone like a dead object when it is\nalive, it grows, it just is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After sweeping the audiences off\ntheir feet in a tsunami of pathos, NPH decided to give our tear ducts and\nbrains a break with Taiwanese teen soap opera Beloved<\/em>. This is soooo bubblegum theatre and seriously, I would\nmuch rather go on an My MVP Valentine rerun marathon — I like this soppy\nserial, by the way — than sit through 90 minutes of just-another-teenage-love-story.\nAt least My MVP Valentine has some pretty good basketball going on. Not to say\nthat the audiences didn’t enjoy the juvenile jokes and bits of slapstick\nschoolyard humour. But with a hackneyed storyline (best friends go after same\ngirl) and its school play presentation, I doubt Beloved<\/em> could inspire the audience to contemplate the mysteries of\nfriendship, which is what, according to Fung Shian, this double bill is\nsupposed to be about anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, I would say that Beloved<\/em> tried too hard NOT to be your\naverage soppy teenage love story, but fails. Do watch out for the hilarious\ntwist at the end though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having witnessed an amazing and\nthought-provoking portrayal of human emotions in all its shades in Brothers<\/em>, I was hoping to see what the\nprotagonists of Beloved<\/em>, Jian Lun\n(the younger self played Ooi Shiong Yirk, the older by Sim Jian Lun) and Jia Yi\n(the younger by Ong Yoong Siong, the older Fong Weng Hong) had to offer. Torn\nbetween friendship and romance, the boys struggle with their mutual desire (Yue\nQi, played by Venice Ang), the heartache of knowing your dream girl prefers\nyour best friend, the guilt of having to stab your friend in the back…\nJealousy, betrayal, awakening, reconciliation … The prospects were juicy\nindeed, and as predicted, these were all written into the play. Sadly, the\nprospects remained just that. One could see them struggling to break through,\nbut weak script \/ direction \/ performance combo was too strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beloved<\/em> left\ntoo many questions unanswered. I couldn’t figure out Jian Lun’s motives for\nmost things, including how he spurred on Jia Yi to go after the girl while\ntaking a chance on her too, then later blames him for breaking up their\nfriendship. His roguish oddball character was seriously underdeveloped. The\nonly personal detail of Jian Lun’s I remember which was not connected to\nanything was that he learnt Taekwondo (and training for national-level\ntournaments isn’t as torturous as they make out in the play!). Stereotypically\ngoody-goody Jia Yi seemed to be unnecessarily thrust into the spotlight (maybe\nthat explains the apparently uncomfortable expression etched onto his face for\nthe entire duration of the play) with a good part of the story taking place in\nHIS bedroom, with HIS mother doling out all the nice-grown-up-role-model advice\nthing, etc. I didn’t want to know the story behind the two-dimensional\ngoody-two-shoes. I wanted to know what made bad-boy Jian Lun bad!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in, it was a commendable effort for this group of young people (many of the cast were post-SPM ex-Drama Club students from SMJK Chung Ling Butterworth — my school for the past 6 years or so, so I was actually watching people I knew cavorting onstage again. Penang theatre scene so small. *sigh*). I do feel however that the teenaged characters in both plays are too idealised — they are rose-tinted versions of what adults would like teenagers to be than real teenagers themselves. Yan and Qin in Brothers<\/em> are supposed to be 15 and 12 but acted like they are both in primary school. It would have been better were their ages not mentioned. Even the love triangle in Beloved<\/em> seemed like one of those misunderstandings that rises from pre-pubescent puppy crush rather than an all out heart\u00ad-wrenching affair involving Upper Secondary students. Whatever happened to teen angst, eh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brothers. Beloved<\/em><\/strong> was first staged at Auditorium A, Komtar, Penang, Fri 9 – Sun 11 Jun 2006. It is staging again at Auditorium Taman Budaya, Alor Star, Kedah, on Fri 23 Jun 2006 (3pm & 8pm), as well as The Actors Studio Bangsar, on Sat 1 July (8pm) and Sun 2 July (3pm & 8pm). <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J-Teoh is a teenaged dramatist living in Penang. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 17.06.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are double bills the fashion nowadays? Directed by up-and-coming 20-year old director Goh Fung Shuan, Noise Performance House’s double bill Brothers. Beloved kicked off to a colourful and flamboyant start with Brothers. A coming-of-age tale of two orphan boys, not actually brothers, who leave their welfare home on a journey into the world, Brothers explores […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3569,3535],"tags":[4303,4299,4296,4053,4297,4302,4300,506,49,4301,4305,4295,4298,550,46,4304],"language":[7523],"writer":[7608],"class_list":["post-27801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-review","category-theatre","tag-fong-weng-hong","tag-goh-chuan-xuan","tag-goh-fung-shuan","tag-komtar","tag-noise-performance-house","tag-ong-yoong-siong","tag-ooi-shiong-yirk","tag-penang","tag-review","tag-sim-jian-lun","tag-smjk-chung-ling-butterworth","tag-taman-budaya-alor-star","tag-tan-kah-leong","tag-the-actors-studio-bangsar","tag-theatre","tag-venice-ang","language-english","writer-jerome-kugan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27801"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39048,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27801\/revisions\/39048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27801"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27801"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}