Wanted to post up an entry about anticipating the attendance of my very first play this year the day before the show. Yes, it happened on Wednesday afternoon, the 7th of April, officially at 3.06pm in fact (according to my handphone's clock). That's an event by itself. But then again, the unfolding of this event was only inevitable because one of my new year's resolutions for the year 2010 is: to not skimp on awesome plays ever again. Blame Vegas.
Let me digress a bit here: When I was in sin city last year, I went into a 'shows frenzy' and indulged in show tickets (Jubilee!, Blue Man Group, Menopause: the musical, Cirque Du Soleil, the works) for almost every night of my stay there. Furthermore, the spillover effects were evident when I spent my time in another city, San Francisco and rrreally wanted to catch the
Wicked musical and
My Fair Lady, and even another play production put up by the local SF theatre company-
update, now I remember the title, it's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest :D. However, I thought my mum wouldn't care less about the plot of Wicked (which is an imagined story of the wicked witch of the west) cuz I bet she didn't even know what the wizard of oz was, and i found out to my great disappointment that my fair lady had only just finished its run in SF (despite misleading ads in the local papers) and had moved on to touring another city. As for the local play production, the show timings only took place in the early evening so it was hard for us to schedule our sight-seeing activities around that play. So in the end you know how my lust for catching a damn play in SF was satiated? I spied placed on the reception counter at our hotel, brochures of a
SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK play-
the Comedy of Errors (and which I studied in JC!). So we just spent one whole day hanging out there. It was tons of fun, I was very VERY impressed by the free production (donations welcomed after the show of course) and the stylized reinterpretation of the characters and play by the theatre company and which my memory of it will last me a lifetime, that I'm sure.
Furthermore, when I was at my last US stop in the city of Los Angeles, I toyed with the idea of catching:
Legally Blonde: the Musical especially as they released discounted premium tickets everyday a couple of hours before the show, and where I saw tons of smartly-dressed people nightly on Hollywood Boulevard making their way to the Pantages theatre venue. But alas, it was hard for us to reschedule our tour activities around the collection timings and god forbid I should sell my heart and soul to all things pink and bimbotic. I'm kinda glad I left that play untouched and morals intact. lol!
Anyway, all these misadventures and whatnot to reconcile my voracious appetite for quality plays while in the US last year
only went to show how much pleasures I had both missed and been denying myself all these years by being stingy in spending money on shows in Singapore!! Oh, did I forget to mention that a little before I left for the US, I had caught
an excellent local play (The Importance of Being Earnest anyone? Such irony. haha) too and was REALLY inspired and impressed by it? :D
SO what attracted me to catch what I deem a quality play that which is The Tempest?? Firstly, the first big draw is that IT'S A PLAY WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE THE MAN dammit (and how often are they re-enacted in Singapore? The last one I can recall was Much Ado About Nothing last year by a local theatre company and which I missed cuz I was not in town)!
^I'm a Shakespeare lover no doubt about it. ;)
Secondly, so much hype around the theatre company staging it- The Bridge Project- and helmed by Hollywood director Sam Mendes himself (yes, THE Samof American Beauty and Kate Winslet fame.We'll get back to that later). Thirdly, I heard with considerable regret that their first play staged here last year, another Shakespeare work, A Winter's Tale, was immensely well-received in Singapore, so...how can I not be like,
almost whole-heartedly attracted to their staging of The Tempest this year? :D I say
almost, because, I am guilty of not reading this book yet. The one in Shakespeare-speak yeah (but that was not really a setback for me as an audience member as we shall see). Anyway, I meant to blog about my anticipatory feelings about the show the day BEFORE the show date:
^the date for my next play attendance is marked on my calendar too :)
^after buying tickets due to an uber enthusiastic response and rubbishing my doubts from my shows-mate-in-crime, I am ashamed to admit that I plopped this Tempest (shakespeare version, from my dad's era and which he left in my possession) on my desk for the whole week, thinking it would encourage me to read the play. Well, I tried. For a couple of pages, and on the train on my way to the show. But you know what, to temper my ignorance of The Tempest's plot (one should at least know the synopsis of any show one watches right?), I dug up this old illustrated children-like version I was gifted on my birthday one fine day, and which I rush-browsed through on the morning of the showdate itself while having my breakfast and getting ready to go for an interview. lol.
^look how richly the characters are dressed? And that eagle...I thought about how it would translate on stage and expected it to look fucking awesome la.
^and a love story. aww. that means the story had a bit of heart of I reckoned. And look how lord-of-rings-like this scene is portrayed in the pic. In a forest with beautiful faries no less. Could u see how I could not have been more uber excited? !!$#@$!#@ Hype sucks. My bad.
Every key event in that book was outlined and boldly illustrated. In about 20 captivating pages. After turning over the final page, I had Great Expectations for the play. Big mistake. You could say this book coloured my vision (pun not intended) of how awesome I thought The Bridge Project's The Tempest was going to be.
On the underground walkway from the train station to the Esplanade, we came across this mega huge poster of the play. The poster looks so cool and modern doesn't it? It's message is like, so ambiguous and mysterious.
^I stress, this pic is taken by me.
^pic taken by passer-by, who couldn't keep his hands steady.
^pic taken by yet another passer-by, who made me look damn fat.
Arrived at the Esplanade itself, with a group of students tailing us like we were their teachers or something. Funnily enough, we ARE both semi-teachers (she just quit her job, I am doing it part-time). At the venue, saw shitloads of students (no wonder I couldn't get student tickets, cuz my friend told me they were sold in limited numbers) standing around and chattering to the dozen. I swear, they were the human versions of magpies la. Doors only opened 15 minutes before the show. Which was quite ridiculous me thinks. I was having to like, talk over the noise level (from those magpies) with my friend. We were really into chatting about our teaching experiences, no less.
When they started letting people make their way to their respective doors, we came across the program books which were displayed on tables and which there was no set price for it, but that donation boxes were placed beside it, with a sign requiring people to fork out money. I saw those students shamelessly like, individually 'donating' two dollar notes into the box. Tsk. Typical stingy Singaporeans epitomised by these youths.
Can I stress the program booklets were those proper kinds with several A4 glossy pages and all? I think normally they would cost at least 20 dollars if I'm not wrong? I couldn't take any pics of the booklets, cuz the signs out front at the ushers warned No Cameras Allowed into the venue at all. My friend did 'purchase' one though, and inside there was a very extended and detailed version of the synopsis, and which we tried to speed-read through together while waiting outside the closed doors cuz they STILL made all of us wait after going through our tickets. Once inside the venue, we couldn't read for nuts cuz the lights were too dim. Anyway, we heard from the announcement while waiting that there would be no intermission. And our reaction at that time was, 'er, ok, no big deal...but that's a first'.
So once the door opened, we made our way to our seats, with the usher leading in front. At first, I thought he was being overly enthusiastic when he overshot our seat row and gestured to the first row. I had clearly told him Row E, which is, 5 rows from the front and which I was carefully counting and stopped precisely at row 5 while jibbing with my friend at the usher about the supposed misunderstanding. But, he walked back to us all smiles, and I told him again, louder this time, "Row e! Seats ONE and TWO." And THEN he goes on to tell us, "yeah, it's (I'm) correct. they moved row E seats to the first row. this way please." I'm like, whaaat. No fricking way. I was just talking to my friend earlier about what awesome seats we have goten so far for shows in Singapore (hers was Queen-the musical and the
Earnest one with me, and mine was
The Earnest one of course) because I was telling her I was only given the choice of seats at the extreme ends of the rows when I bought my tickets about 2 weeks ago, as ALL the middle seats were taken up (as informed to me by the sympathetic Sistic staff). So to get our seats moved forward Vegas-style now was too fricking awesome for us for words man! And right to the first row. Beat that:
^view from where we sat. Legroom was awesome eh, to say the least.
^the stage is larger-than-life in front of us!
^excited+smug grins=US!
^poor suckers sitting behind and high above us...he he he. Think it's like, my 2nd time here. The last time was eons ago for West Side Story.
^this is basically my frontal view where I sat. I had a glorified view of the musician and his workings the whole night :D We may have swiped and hid a log or two in our bags on our way out ;)
Alright alright, so on with the show. It started 6 minutes after 3pm on that fateful Wednesday. The two musicians first walked out and took their places at the two extreme ends of the stage. The younger androgynous-looking one sat in front of me and donned his headphones :) Their instruments were a very VERY eclectic mix of mostly percussion types. I even spotted like, a guitar (if my eyes didn't deceive me, because I didn't hear it being played during the show) leaning against the wall at the other extreme end of the stage before the show started and thought it was some stage prop or something. Anyway, the musicians took damn long to get ready la. Or should I say, the Prospero actor. We waited for him for close to ten minutes to come out. (During this time, the theatre venue had magically gone completely silent. Like, that 'one could really hear a pin drop' kind of silence. Everyone was literally waiting with bated breaths. It is at this point when I sighed to my friend and said, "I could really imagine Jason Mraz having such an awesome maiden concert here at the Esplanade back in 2006. The acoustics must have been damn good and the ambience damn cozy like this la!" No surprises for guessing how I felt about the other concerts I
have caught of him in Singapore- that
of Singfest and at the Indoor Stadium.)
*Beware for those planning to catch the last 2 shows Tempest tomorrow, spoilers to come.*
I really liked the opening scene a lot, very dramatic (one of the highlights definitely!). It started with Prospero (the protagonist in the play) baptizing the stage with water for quite sometime. lol! Didn't help that he was dressed in a long cloak looking very much like a gregorian priest or something. And you know what?? He did appear in even more priest-like clothes somewhere along the the show. So after the stage was splashed with what Prospero deemed an adequate amount of water, all the actors for the first act stepped forward and sang something very solemn-like. And then when they acted out the 'panicked shipcrew thrashing around in the cursed raging seas' scene, the water splashed around onstage very realistically and dramatically against the silhouette of the darkened stage and harsh spotlights when the actors were frantically scuttling around. For a fleeting moment, I was afraid if any of the actors would slip and fall. I don't know how they managed not to fall lor. Call it professionalism or what. But I had faith in them after that initial few seconds of doubt passed when I assured myself there weren't going to be any casualties.
Overall thoughts (proper names of the actors shall be mentioned later):
-I'll be straight-up. I thought the play was too somber and serious for my liking. First reaction, wtf is up with all those black and dark clothes? Hello? The stage is already dark enough, you don't want your actors fading into insignificance.
-While we're on clothes, the costumes of the actors really disappointed me. Huge let-down. Mostly simple suits and dark-coloured. Like, aren't the prominent actors supposed to be royalty and rich men? Flashy would have been the way I say. All the more so when most of the actors delivered their lines very dryly and seemingly jadedly throughout.
-The portrayal of Prospero by the actor was alright for the most part. But I felt he was kind of predictable and one-dimensional. He could have been more tender with his only daughter Miranda especially in his first scene with her, but he seemed harsh and like, her deranged captor or something. Therefore, I felt it implausible that he flippantly forgave his enemies and when he gave that supposedly heartfelt speech in the end. You know what was freaking funny about that speech even? The audience (I'm guessing ignorant students) that day couldn't wait for him to finish, clapping a couple of times to interrupt his ending speech. The actor had to stop halfway to signal he wasn't done and said 'wait'. So his 'dramatic' self-reflection moment was so spoiled la. It wasn't even built up properly right in the first place me thinks. So it was such a joke that it unintentionally backfired and became a farce.
-Ariel was a bit too intense and bent on carrying out his duties. For heaven's sake, he's a mischievious spirit, meant to be like a poltergeist in the play , that is, to wreck havoc and chaos while gaining a little pleasure from toying with the humans. And he looked like an elf being half naked and skinny with porcelain skin. So act more light-heartedly la. Another VERY weird scene was when he hugged to his bosom Ferdinand, the King's son who was in his confused state after seeing Ariel when his knees gave out and he was sitting on the floor. The actor of Ariel was supposed to change his form to be a female spirit so yeah, he wore a nightgown, BUT HE DID NOT WEAR A FRICKING WOMEN'S WIG. Maybe yes, it's supposed to be playing on the audience-versus-character knowledge/ignorance juxtaposition but to see Ariel suddenly being all loving and motherly/angelic-like to a human character and singing to him was freaky. And homo. I was like thinking, this scene is so wrong in many ways. I just don't get it.
-Me thinks, Miranda was a very annoyingly hysterical woman (like 'hormonally-unstable' hysterical) and waaay emotionally-wrecked in the scenes before she met her one true love. In every single scene-from feeling much empathy to the ship members to her interactions with her father to her fear of Caliban. She was like a deranged lady. Did the director intend to portray her as this precocious teenager or something? And then she suddenly has a roundabout change of identity when she meets Ferdinand. Suddenly she's this blissful-zen, 'everything is so perfect in my world' person. It's a little disgusting. Like, I kept thinking exasperatedly, is she
that shallow and one-dimensional too?
-And, can the lovers' parts get any mushier when suddenly, a modern video is played about her childhood (of her 3-yr-old self skiing down slopes, swinging on a swing, falala, etc.) just before she gets a blessing ceremony by her dad? At that point, I really felt the director was having such an inconsistent mishmash of themes and ideas. Like, if you want the theme to be modern, make it modern all the way. Like say for instance, dress up the grown-up Miranda in more decently modern-looking clothes in the first place.
-Overall, most, if not all the characters should have been given more depth I say. You could see the various characters' portrayals were very set and limited, and yes, so predictable and one-dimensional early on.
-Set was too minimalist. I don't get why. Isn't it supposed to be a big production? I expected much more.
-An intermission was quite necessary honestly. I mean, the play was just such a heavy drama.
ok, what I like. Redeeming qualities:
-the mostly minimal instruments featured by musicians and background music was awesomely ingenious. they can make such sounds from their smallest of inventions to their weirdest of percussion instruments. Right from the start, did you see that thing they used to make the wave sounds? :DD
-the live ambient singing by the actors were incredible too.Wished it could have dragged out longer in scenes. But we got a redeeming climatic music presentation during the riotously rousing couple-blessings scene, where it concluded with everyone forming a ring and dancing kookily onstage. Was pleasantly surprised by that (since by this point, the play had really lived down its hype), and wholly welcomed it honestly.
-Caliban portrayed by the actor was an animated joy to watch. Whenever he appeared, I would sit up and hang to the edge of my seat. I think his fellow actors bounced their energy off of him whenever they shared scenes with him. At first I thought he should have been dressed to look more deformed and repulsive, but the actor successfully managed to convey the ugly harshness and unicivilness of the character adeptly.
-the switch of scattering water to sand by Prospero on the stage was clever too. Especially during the scuffle scenes among the trio of the comic relief characters, that of the jester, butler and Caliban. Again, the dust was swirling realistically around onstage and all the more added to the dramatic touches.
-it's funny that I have to think harder for this than my complaints. I'll add in more points when I come up with them as it's late now.
-oh yeah you know what, I can add to my list of resolutions, "Get through all of Shakespeare's works slowly but surely!" He is just such a great story-teller, than say, Sam Mendes. Sorry Sam! Wasn't feeling you.
Closing thoughts:
-Honestly, I was looking more to be entertained, to be blown away. The production set was minimal, so was the director banking more on the actors' mettle? They did not impress.
-Maybe I would have found more answers in the Q & A session which took place a little after the show.
-But by then, I was too tired (I was like, zoning out when the actors were delivering their more lengthy speeches. Very nearly felt myself nodding off at one point. Had to fight to keep awake) and let-down you could say. Needless to say, no standing ovation in plain sight and no appreciative cat-callings or whistles at the end.
-Maybe it would have been more worthwhile spending my money on Jamie Cullum or Kelly Clarkson's upcoming gigs eh.
PS: Where was Sam Mendes at the curtain call?? (don't tell me he's busy settling divorce matters with Kate Winslet back in the US?)
