{"id":27915,"date":"2007-03-01T05:37:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-01T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27915"},"modified":"2024-07-04T13:50:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T05:50:41","slug":"death-and-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2007\/03\/death-and-tears\/","title":{"rendered":"Death and Tears"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Fancy costumes and hoity-toity\nlanguage do not generally agree with me in the theatre, so it was with much\ntrepidation that I went to see Wong Phui Nam’s Anike: A Play In Verse<\/em> (at Dewan Budaya USM on the January 26th<\/sup>\nand 27th<\/sup>, it also played at Jalan Bukit Bintang’s Wisma SGM the\nprevious weekend). The ‘Play In Verse’ subtitle induced visions of\npoetry-spouting snobbishness — fears probably caused by listening to puisi\ndeclamations in wailing, strangled tones during official functions. Real people\ndon’t speak in verse. Real people speak in incomplete sentences, with imperfect\ngrammar and a very limited vocabulary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was pleasantly surprised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plastic-looking costumes were a\njarring albeit minor distraction; more importantly, however, was that Anike<\/em> didn’t sound the least bit like a\npoetry recital. Listening to the actors, I wouldn’t have noticed they were\nspeaking in verse, thanks to director Himanshu Bhatt’s careful, delicate\nhandling of the rhymes. As he states in his director’s notes: “…\nlyricism finds life in a meaningful representation on stage. Any surplus\ndabbling — either by multimedia, pyrotechnics or undue experimental\nexpressions — and the work shudders like a finely woven web that is\ndisturbed.” My fears were unfounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gist of Anike<\/em> retains the plot and themes of its inspiration, Sophocle’s Antigone<\/em>, and Phui Nam’s subtle\nreferences to regional history and legends in his adaptation, like Majapahit\nand the Tuah \/ Jebat connection (as exemplified by Wira and Sirat, Anike<\/em>‘s Eteocles and Polyneices), serve\nto reinforce the play — as if the events in Anike<\/em> were taking place in an alternate universe (the production\nnotes state that the story is set in a successor city to Temasik, but don’t\nstate which), foreign but familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death and Tragedy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the clash of values between\nAntigone and Creon is central to the Greek tragedy, in Phui Nam’s version Anike\nlacks the conviction and feistiness to move the audience the way Antigone does\n— it is Maniaka, the king, who carries the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anike <\/em>got\noff to a slightly choppy start — with Anike (May Kung) and Yasmine (Saw\nJin-Jin) attempting to mimic the puisi reading style I so dread — but as the\nmomentum picked up, I began to find myself engrossed in the internal tug-of-war\nhappening within King Maniaka (powerfully played by Jayaram Menon).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having decreed the punishment of Sirat — a Jebat-style warrior who went amok, took over the palace, and turned His Majesty out — and Sirat’s Xena-Warrior\u00ad-Princess-wannabe sister Anike — who insisted on giving her brother a proper burial; here, special mention should be given to Aliakbar Campwala, for his delightfully comical performance as the guard who caught Anike in the act of burying her brother — Maniaka stubbornly struggles to uphold and defend his edict, despite pleas and entreaties by his courtiers who insist that this action is grossly unwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a firm believer of keeping my\npromises and seeing my decisions through to the bitter end, King Maniaka’s\neventual fate was, personally, rather unnerving: when his conscience creeps up\non him, the king tries to right his wrongs, but ends up being punished anyway\n— losing his son Nadim (Lim Yao Han), then his beloved queen, Wanang Seri\n(Fariza Ariffin; very muhibbah casting).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death is a powerful catalyst for\nchange; Anike<\/em>‘s ironic heart is that\nthose threatened with death — the subjects of the city — have grown weary of\nthe threat and do not fear it, while the one who threatens others with the\nshadow of death — their sovereign — ends up the one most affected by the\ndeaths of his loved ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crazy Ballerinas<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death can drive an already unsteady\nmind off the brink of insanity — a point continuously stressed in My Ballet Shoes<\/em>, written and directed by\nThe Actors Studio Greenhall’s new theatre supervisor, Wan Rosli. Portraying the\nhysterical, psychotic rants of ex-ballerina Ayu (played by Anne Nurbaya),\ntortured by the death of her husband and loss of her legs due to a car\naccident, My Ballet Shoes<\/em> (which I\nwent to see with some degree of expectance) almost drove me off my seat as\nwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clocking around 30 minutes, I\nthought that the end of the play was its intermission. When I realised that the\ncast was coming out to take their bows, I was shocked and blinking. Was that\nall? Why end when things were just about to get interesting? As far as I could\ntell, the entire half-hour was merely an introduction. Check out my summary:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meet Ayu. Ayu’s mad. Ayu’s mad because her husband left her. Ayu loves\nher husband very much. Why did Ayu’s husband leave her? Ayu’s all alone. Everybody\nhates Ayu. Ayu’s caretaker Inaz hates her. Inaz hates Ayu because Ayu is a self-absorbed,\narrogant bastard. Inaz takes care of Ayu, because Inaz wants revenge. Ayu was a\ntop dancer, choreographer, etc; and Inaz was not worthy enough to be her\nstudent. Inaz did not deserve to be her student. Ayu can’t dance anymore,\nbecause she sits in a wheelchair. Ayu is angry. Ayu goes mad some more.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were too many question left\nunanswered, too many loose ends. Inaz (played by Enaz; that’s really her\nname!), especially, was a lot more intriguing a character than Ayu, and\nseverely underdeveloped. Who is she? Why does she, of all people, take care of\nAyu? Does she hate Ayu, or does she actually care?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfinished Business<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towards My Ballet Shoes<\/em>\u2019s end is the play\u2019s most competent scene: Inaz\nholding a wrenched Ayu — sobbing helplessly on the floor, consumed by anger\nand bitterness — in her arms and consoling her:  “There is someone who loves him more,\nAyu … God loves him more.” This short line, a poignant bit of pathos,\nwas a refreshing change from the earlier pace of the play, where Ayu tells the\naudience everything — but we see and feel nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He wants you to realise, so\nthat you would change yourself to becoming a better person,” Inaz\ncontinues, “Not like the old you, who is arrogant, proud and always so\nangry.” Divine intervention is pretty idea, just the kind of consolation\nthat a psychotic schizophrenic like Ayu might accept, more than a death with no\nrhyme or reason. Yet Ayu remains angry, wrapped in her cloak of denial and\ngrief — a pretty accurate depiction of what people go through during times of\ntragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, however, My Ballet Shoes<\/em> — as it was staged at\nGreenhall on February 2nd<\/sup> to 4th<\/sup> — is a script in\nprogress.  A badly-written one at that,\nwrought with bad English and grammatical errors like: “How could I live\nthis life with such disability? Where are all you sweet loving promises vanish\nto?” and “There is still some kind thought for you from this person\nwho you once look down on.” I have yet to meet a heartbroken female who\nhas lost both her mind and<\/em> her sense\nof grammar — there is always a first time for everything, I suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosli would have benefited from a\ndramaturg — or a proofreader. RM20 for something so unpolished was highway\nrobbery; an RM5 ticket would have been more appropriate. And call it as it is:\na workshop, or a work-in-progress. Hallo, customer satisfaction is very\nimportant, you know. Don’t mislead people into thinking your draft is a\nfull-fledged play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe in miracles, and I’m\nalways looking forward to new works, new styles, and new experiences by new\nwriters and directors. First-timers can actually work magic sometimes — just\ntake the kids of Penang’s DiGi’s Amazing Malaysians project last year as an\nextreme example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With My Ballet Shoes<\/em>, this wasn’t the case. Interesting that, while Anike<\/em> (which I’d dreaded) ended up being an eye-opening experience, the play I had sunny expectations of turned out a disappointment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

First Published: 01.03.2007 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fancy costumes and hoity-toity language do not generally agree with me in the theatre, so it was with much trepidation that I went to see Wong Phui Nam’s Anike: A Play In Verse (at Dewan Budaya USM on the January 26th and 27th, it also played at Jalan Bukit Bintang’s Wisma SGM the previous weekend). […]<\/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":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3569,3535],"tags":[4398,4396,4387,4397,4394,4389,4392,4393,4390,49,4391,3175,46,4395,4388,3295],"writer":[7681],"class_list":["post-27915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-review","category-theatre","tag-aliakbar-campwala","tag-anne-nurbaya","tag-dewan-budaya-usm","tag-enaz","tag-fariza-ariffin","tag-himanshu-bhatt","tag-jayaram-menon","tag-lim-yao-han","tag-may-kung","tag-review","tag-saw-jin-jin","tag-the-actors-studio-greenhall","tag-theatre","tag-wan-rosli","tag-wisma-sgm","tag-wong-phui-nam","writer-j-teoh"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27915","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=27915"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39010,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27915\/revisions\/39010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27915"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}