Review by VERNON ADRIAN EMUANG

OCBC-SINGAPORE THEATRE FESTIVAL

Aug 6-24, various venues

Singapore

SINGAPOREAN theatre luminary Ivan Heng has always been generous about sharing the limelight with Malaysian talent in his significant artistic initiatives.

Audiences in 1999 will remember fondly Heng's gender-bender portrayal of the title character in seminal Singaporean play, Emily of Emerald Hill, in Kuala Lumpur.

Together with Malaysian director (the late) Krishen Jit - whom Heng describes on his company website as his 'mentor, colleague and closest collaborator' - Heng boldly unleashed Stella Kon's Emily on packed houses of raucous laughter and heartfelt tears before taking it to Singapore and subsequently on to numerous theatre festivals and cities around the world.

The international success of Heng's Emily had deep, even umbilical, connections with Malaysia. For, apart from Krishen, there were other Malaysian talents involved, such as award-winning designers Raja Malik (for set and costumes) and Mac Chan (for lighting), and production company DramaLab.

Heng's Emily became one of the cornerstones upon which he confidently established his own theatre company in Singapore, christened W!ld Rice.

That was in 2000. And it seems, eight years later, with W!ld Rice viewed as perhaps the most artistically and commercially successful Singaporean theatre company, Heng continues to engage in his 'cherished artistic conversation with Malaysia'.

At the W!ld Rice-produced and curated OCBC Singapore Theatre Festival 08 recently, Malaysian playwright Kee Thuan Chye had his turn. (Kee is an Associate Editor at The Star and editor of StarTwo's weekly Mind Our English section.)

The sophomore edition of the three-week long festival opened with Kee's The Swordfish, Then the Concubine, a fabulistic cobbling of two Malay tales from Sejarah Melayu (The Malay Annals) that are set in ancient Singapura.

The first tells the story of how a young boy, Hang Nadim, saves Singapura from an attack of swordfish by cleverly suggesting to the Sultan that a simple barricade of banana stems would be a better option to receive the deadly spears of the flying swordfish than a phalanx of his citizens. Though the suggestion saves the day, the boy is executed on the advice of the Sultan's ministers who feel threatened by his intelligence.

The second tale is of how the Sultan's concubine is wrongly accused and then executed in public for infidelity and religious deviation, thereby igniting cosmic repercussion on the kingdom through a foreign invasion.

Through the re-telling of these tales, Kee cleverly and cheekily touches upon pertinent issues of Malaysian politics, culture, and society - which were not entirely lost on the largely Singaporean audience.

The relationship of trust (or perhaps mistrust) between ruler and subject, arguably not unlike that of the elected and their voter-constituents, and how prejudice, paranoia, and bad advice can really screw things up were astutely conveyed in the performance.

Set in minimalist staging that featured a serambi or open platform for village gatherings, 15 Singaporean actors tackled a story that called for a cast of thousands across two generations - you couldn't get more epic than that, right?

Especially so when you have a gamelan orchestra providing for the peaks and troughs of human drama, the deafening clamour of war, and the crescendo of divine retribution. Music composer Joyce Teo and the Gamelan Asmarada group delivered proficiently on that aspect.

The underlying political commentary linked current issues to these ancient myths quite commendably in the writing. Similarly, it was truly fascinating to watch the production draw stylistically from bangsawan (Malay opera), dikir barat, and silat to facilitate and vibrantly colour the storytelling.

The genius of Heng in making simple theatrical gestures resonate with blinding symbolism came to the fore when Hang Nadim is killed. This reviewer gasped when the trail of blood the boy's corpse leaves behind becomes the red carpet upon which those in the higher echelons of political power pompously tread.

Those of us who live on this side of the Causeway can be proud of the fact that a script from Malaysia kicked off the OCBC-Singapore Theatre Festival. Let us hope there are plans to bring Swordfish home soon, as it has yet to be performed here.

Additionally, this reviewer also noted that a recurring theme in two of the festival's plays was the location of the ethnic Malay within the Singapore milieu - slyly addressing the deeply-embedded, seldom-confronted, policy-emboldened racism on the island republic.

In Apocalypse: Live!, written by ex-political journalist Ken Kwek and directed by Samantha Scott-Blackhall, an inexplicable disaster wipes out the entire Singapore Cabinet leaving an ethnic Malay army general in charge, a role delivered with appropriate mania by diminutive but power-packed Gene Sha Rudyn.

This development among others on this 'small but self-important nation' is covered by an overly earnest TV anchorman, played by Brendon Fernandez, who struggles unsuccessfully against becoming a mere pawn in the manipulations of state-owned media.

A simple-minded taxi driver masterfully portrayed by Lee Weng Kee interviewed in the post-apocalyptic ruins reminds the audience in the closing moments of the play what really matters to the man in the street: 'I think things in Singapore are getting too expensive.'

Running simultaneously at another venue, Own Time Own Target, promoted as a triple-bill - two comedies and a musical - about National Service in Singapore, was deemed a runaway box-office success by festival staff, as it sold out two weeks before its Aug 20 opening!

It was evident that Singaporean NS experiences provided perfect backdrops against which to place every imaginable and even laughable male stereotype Singaporeans could identify with.

In two of the three plays presented here, the Singaporean Malay would deservingly earn great audience affection or heartfelt sympathy.

The very likeable Ghazali Muzakir as Yusoff who struggles to come to terms, in the first, with a bladder that needs urgent attention, and in the second, with a soldier-buddy's homosexuality, deserves mention for his deft handling of hilarious comedic turns and hurtful confusion in these respective portrayals.

Among other offerings at the festival, Blood Binds presented four short plays (across two double bills) about growing old and ageing that was notable for providing lead role performance opportunities for mature-age theatre practitioners.

It was refreshing to see naturally silver-haired veterans take to the stage in lead roles.

The presenting companies of Magdalena and The Substation were responsible for conceiving this worthwhile module.

All in all, Heng, festival dramaturg Alfian Saat, executive producer Tony Trickett, and everyone at W!ld Rice deserve applause for a fascinating festival of spectacular ideas and sharp-as-nails presentations. Here's to the next one in 2010, with some of our talent thrown in for good measure!