Ring out for the Doctor, wild bells...

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

It's a little late, but I've just finished it. Watching The End of Time and watching the Doctor die. Because that's what it feels like. Despite knowing that he regenerates - that even though this song, his song ends, the story continues - it still feels like something precious and irreplaceable has been lost.


And something was. Tennant was my Doctor. From the moment I saw him - all tousled-haired, gangly and grinning at the sight of a werewolf - in Tooth and Claw, he was and became all that the Doctor was to me. That capacity for wonder, amazement and perverse joy at the simple fact of being alive and able to see all the wonders and weirdness that the universe holds despite having lived so long, seen so much and left so many loved ones for dead along the wayside - all that, crystallized in a manic smile and wide, wide eyes.

It'd been so long since I'd come across a television character I admired as much as this entity of time and space, fire and passion, control and conviction. And the more I saw of him the more I learnt: I learnt his sense of humour; I learnt from his perverse enjoyment of the dangers and tribulations of life; I learnt his cry of "Brilliant - absolutely brilliant"; but most of all I wanted to learn to have his inner strength of character. That strength which allowed him to be the champion of all that is decent, good, and right in the universe - even if it killed him slowly, deep inside.

I don't want to go.

No, Doctor - and we didn't want to see you go. Even if you had the death you deserved and the only death that was worthy of you: one suffered in order to save the life of a single good and decent human being. Yet how your rage at surviving The End of Time itself only to make this sacrifice mirrored our own rage and grief at having to lose you. There was still so much you could have done indeed.

Goodbye, David. Goodbye, Ten. You were everything a Doctor should have been - gorgeous, brilliant, eccentric and fun, fun, fun. It was a send-off you deserved, but how you will be mourned nonetheless!

Ringing It In

Another year coming to a close - and another odd way to spend New Year's Eve: flitting from work, to lunch, lunch again, karaoke session, family dinner and then a massage, QI-viewing session before finally catching the last of the Marina Barrage countdown on the television (seriously, who are "Da Mouth?") and watching the fireworks live from the vantage point of my flat window.


And I think that if you count how Jan, Viv and I spent our first hours of the new decade checking out Radio 1's Live Lounge covers and other weird videos (Janice: "That Queen video is a serious mindf***"), you'd definitely come to the conclusion that just finds the strangest ways to spend her New Years :)

Happy New Year to all!

Mix Tape

The list of musicals, theatre and comedies attended as it stands at the end of 2009. Looking back, it's a little surprising to see how impressive the list turned out. But if you took away the 6 plays, and 3 comedies I saw whilst in London for just 3 weeks, the Singapore-based pickings were slim indeed.

I do have a tendency, though, to prefer international productions to local ones and perhaps that preference is responsible for the paltry list. Hopefully the resistance to local productions may be overcome in the year ahead. I do not have high hopes, but life is generally surprising and any surprise would be a marvelous delight. I shall keep my fingers, toes and various other extremities crossed.

Musicals

Victor/Victoria - Zebra Crossings Production starring Laura Fygi, Esplanade Theatre, Singapore

Concerts

The Ting Tings - Big Night Out 2009, Fort Canning Park, Singapore
Coldplay: The Viva La Vida Tour - Singapore Indoor Stadium, Singapore
The Graveyard Party with Amanda Palmer - Singapore Arts House, Singapore

Plays

What the Butler Saw - Zebra Crossing Productions, Drama Centre, Singapore
Story of a Rabbit - Hoipolloi production, Singapore Museum, Singapore
The Winter's Tale - Bridge Project production, Esplanade Theatre, Singapore
The Importance of Being Earnest - Wild Rice all-male cast production, Drama Centre, Singapore
Much Ado About Nothing - Singapore Repertory Theatre starring Adrian Pang, Fort Canning Park, Singapore
Romeo & Juliet - Shakespeare Globe Theatre, London
Madame de Sade - Donmar West End production starring Judi Dench, Wyndham's Theatre, London
Waiting for Godot - starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
Arcadia - written by Tom Stoppard, with his son in one of the lead roles, Duke of York Theatre, London
Hamlet - Donmar West End production starring Jude Law, Wyndham's Theatre, London
The Cherry Orchard - Bridge Project production, Old Vic, London
The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) - Reduced Shakespeare Company, Drama Centre, Singapore
Season's Greetings - The Stage Club, DBS Arts Centre, Singapore
A Christmas Carol - TNT Theatre Productions, Raffles Hotel Jubilee Hall, Singapore
Hamlet: The Clown Prince - In English and in Gibberish, directed by Rajar Kapoor, Esplanade Theatre Studio, Singapore

Comedy

Rob Brydon on Tour - Apollo Theatre, London
Have I Got News For You - filmed on 28 May, 37th series episode 6, Guest host David Mitchell with guest panelists Richard Cole and Andrew Maxwell
Stephen Fry's Q.I - filmed on 5 June, G series, Germany episode, guests were Jo Brand, Rob Brydon and Sean Locke
Jump! - Comic Martial Arts Performance - Esplanade Theatre, Singapore

Missing Christmas

Listening to Jack Dee and Jo Brand moan about Christmas Day celebrations on their Christmas Radio 2 slot makes me miss passing the season in the UK - even despite the stories about the nightmare of cooking the Christmas lunch, entertaining kids, dealing with boring or irritating relatives, and spending eons writing Christmas cards only to get random gifts you don't want from the local Indian curry seeking to do a spot of advertising...

Somehow it still beats spending your Christmas day in a completely consumerist frenzy the way Singaporeans here do, by descending upon Orchard Road in hordes to hit the sales. I'm completely exhausted from a full day of shopping now - and thoroughly depressed by the thought that I still have to spend Boxing Day running up and down the whole country.

Merry Bloody Christmas. And Bah, Humbug.

Nevermore

It has finally ended. The last PLC examination has been taken; the last book, the last sheaf of papers, taken up and read for the sole purpose of answering a bunch of silly questions. After 24 years of existence and 17 years of studying, slaving away at books and taking examinations it is finally, finally and utterly OVER.

And after an evening of volunteer work, I took to the dance floor at Butter Factory with my classmates to celebrate the fact.


Quoth the Raven, Nevermore. I don't think I could bring myself to look at another examination paper again, ever. Though knowing my fickle mind, that resolution will probably change once I get to the same level of exhaustion from working life. And I suspect it'll take much less than 17 years to do so.

Time and tide - we'll see, at some point. For now, though, life is good once more. Let the court vacation commence!

Waiting for Godot: the Replay?

I received an email today from the Theatre Royal Haymarket announcing that Waiting For Godot would be returning for another run - starring (this time), Roger Rees and Matthew Kelly as Patrick Stewart and Simon Callow's replacements.

I suppose the question that immediately came to mind was: why?

The play was enormously enjoyable and definitely no shoddy production. The star power of its cast also made it the must-watch play of the summer. But was it really necessary to bring the exact same production back to the same theatre a second year running?

I have to agree with what Mr Perry once said - that part of the magic and beauty of theatre is that it comes, and it goes. It is not a musical, which plays for years and never really changes throughout its (what can be) decades-long run. But theatre is ephemeral and ultimately every play gives way to another and another. And each time you go to the theatre it will be to not only see different people but different visions, different sets, different interpretations, and different everything else.

But I digress. Furthermore, who am I to cast the first stone in this case, when I am one of those who enjoys owning DVDs of the productions she caught, in the hope that the initial magic and joy might be somehow caught and preserved in digital form? In the end, I suppose, there's nothing wrong with bringing back a production that so many wished to catch. I only hope the West End does not make a habit of doing so.

In the same vein, however, I note that the Patrick Stewart/Rupert Goold production of Macbeth is being filmed for release on BBC television. So it is likely that I'll have another DVD to add to my burgeoning collection of Shakespeare teleplays soon. Naturally, I look forward to it.

Hamlet - The Clown Prince

I was actually walking down the underpass towards the Esplanade with Alison and her family during their day-zip through Singapore when I noticed the poster for this production. Brought in as part of the Esplanade’s Indian Festival of Arts (Kalaa Utsavam), the concept was promising and fascinating: having clowns put on, discover, warp and bring to life one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. It sounded too good to miss. I still looked back fondly at the memory of David Tennant's jester-like Prince and Tim Supple's Indian production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, so a union of the two experiences boded well.

And when the poster noted that the play was to be put on "in gibberish and in English," I was completely sold. Naturally, I wasn't going to miss anything being put on in gibberish for the world.


Hamlet: The Clown Prince is, when you cut it down to the chase, a play in which a troupe of clowns attempt to put on a show of Hamlet. A sophisticated Singaporean audience, they declared, was looking for tragedy and not comedy. Yet for all the Ringmaster's attempts to move their staging forward, "clownishness" - to paraphrase an off-the-cuff remark by Leonard Cohen - "kept breaking through." Throughout the 1 hour and 40 minute staging, the clowns interpreted and misinterpreted the text, sought the play's meaning and essence, and tried to understand and empathize with it. Very often, though, they simply made a mess of it - but a wonderful, hilarious and entertaining mess it was, nonetheless.

And as much as the production was ostensibly a staging of Hamlet it was also a showcase for the clowns themselves: their petty squabbles; their egos; their quarrels and bickering; their talents; and their personalities and idiosyncrasies.

I greatly enjoyed the way in which the characters and back-stories of many of the clowns seemed to mirror the stories of the characters they played. I enjoyed how Soso, who played Hamlet at the (requested) insistence of the audience, arrived onstage "late" like the prodigal son and proceeded to demonstrate a cynicism, independence, and rapport and understanding with the audience ("I come from India... Singapore... confusing... everywhere building, building, building... and no cows!") so much like the Prince's own audience identification that it was hard to tell sometimes where the clown ended and the character began. I appreciated the back-story of a lovers' squabble between Soso and the clown who played Gertrude, as it added an interesting twist to the relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet ("who loved his Mama too much").

The clown who provided the most laughs, however, had to be Fido, who insisted on punctuating his delivery of Claudius' lines with random dances, moonwalks, music hall jokes and turns and whose first appearance was made holding and talking to an egg which subsequently (and very randomly) hatched into a little hand-puppet bird. If nothing, he was singlehandedly responsible for keeping the audience in stitches for the whole evening and a certain amount of kudos must be given for that.

But for all the random clowning, wry remarks at the play's expense, and jibes at the audience, there were moments of straight, and truly marvelous acting. One instance of it was Ophelia's closet scene, where Soso as Hamlet approaches Ophelia with all the coiled power of a tiger waiting to pounce on its prey and seizes her for a searing kiss, only to viciously twist her arm the next moment and whisper in her ear to "Get thee to a nunnery." The passion and intensity of the scene blew my mind away and demonstrated how the format of the play - by condensing and removing the words and turning it essentially into a balanced interplay of monologue, narration and action - could uncover the very core and heart of a classic Shakespeare scene that is more verbose than it needs to be.


Tragedy staged by clowns. It is perhaps less strange a concept than you think. Shakespeare's tragedies have always featured clowns: the gravediggers in Hamlet, the doorman in Macbeth, and Lear's Fool. As the rustics or the groundlings, they were the most honest, forthright and earthy characters in the play. Benefiting from their marginal position, they often acted as the mediators between the actors and the audience - commenting on the acts of the high and noble by fulfilling that role of all fools, which is to point out to the Emperor that he hath no clothes on. Raj Kapoor's production merely brought these archetypes away from the shadowy fringes of the plays and into their own spotlight.

There is also the cliche concerning clowns: that behind every smiling mask is a man of infinite and tragic sadness. The question of what lies beneath the painted mask and the smiling exterior mirrors the theme in Hamlet, where the disjoint between what is and what seems is picked up on by Hamlet himself early in the play ("Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems'").

Hamlet the play is all about the dark reality lying beneath the serene exterior: fear and war bubbling not far under the surface of a strong and secure Denmark; Claudius' sin beneath the kingly exterior; and Hamlet's own madness masking his very sane mission of revenge. How suitable, therefore, for clowns - with their painted faces masking the true people beneath - to play these characters, whose own masks are slowly stripped away and the scales torn from their eyes by the whirlwind of Hamlet's madness.

So, would I recommend this production to anyone? I certainly would - for its sheer entertainment factor. The performance I attended was chock full of A level students who had been told of the play by their teacher and who, as they were doing Hamlet for their studies, trooped down for a full scale invasion of the Esplanade Theatre Studio. The play was well paced and timed just right - the concept would not have carried longer than the 1 hour and 40 minutes it was scheduled for. And what was done was done very well - even the gibberish, which had its moment (literally) in the spotlight at the play's opening when Soso (as yet unintroduced to us) did the longest and strangest monologue in gibberish known to man. It was all nonsense (I have a Fry and Laurie sketch in mind here) and yet it was the most poignant and funny thing on earth. A lesson to all those present, that in reality we need so few of the words that we use and hear every day in order to derive and determine meaning.

Hamlet: The Clown Prince is no longer showing in Singapore, alas. But if you have the chance to catch it elsewhere, do. And if nothing else, the director promises to return one day with another clown production of Shakespeare. It should be a sight to catch indeed.

TNT Theatre Britain's A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is probably the most well-known Christmas story there is - and the one with the most number of remakes ever, I should imagine (personally I think the Muppets' Christmas Carol is the best screen version out there but anyone is free to disagree with me if they so choose). Strangely, however, the story has very rarely been staged and I think Patrick Stewart's one-man production was the last I heard of A Christmas Carol being brought to the theatre.

Coincidentally, Disney's new animated remake (starring *shudder* Jim Carrey) will also be hitting film theatres across Singapore soon - which meant I've had to qualify my statements of "I'm going to be watching A Christmas Carol" to friends with the exasperated "No, not the movie - a stage production" several times now over the past few weeks.

Be that as it may, the point of all the above is that the Christmas Carol story is probably familiar enough to everyone for me to forego a summary of the plot and to jump straight into an account of its staging by TNT Theatre Britain. Despite all my better googling efforts, I've been able to learn precious little about this theatre group. The only conclusion I've come to is that they're all English, and that they tour - and apart from that, nothing. There seem to be no reviews online, and my friends and I went into the play with no sense of the production company at all.

As a result, we went into the play not knowing what to expect - apart from the vague reassurance voiced by myself that, "If a production is able to travel it can't be all that bad." And it seemed from the first Act (which started out with Dickens' infamous words "Marley was dead" and ended with the departure of the Ghost of Christmas Past) that my prediction was perhaps just a little too accurate. The staging showed some promise - with a mixture of song, music, and whimsical comedy thrown in alongside straight acting. And the set was also as minimal as you could get: with two flimsy window-shaped frames that flapped and swayed with the gusts thrown up by the moving stage curtain doubling up as doors when necessary, a few chairs and a plank doubling as a bed and a crescent moon glowing on the back stage. And with a total cast of only 6 (3 men and 3 women) and one of them permanently playing Scrooge all the way through, the remaining 5 were responsible for playing all the various other characters - which rather inevitably meant that some imaginative quick costume changes, cross-dressing and even the odd puppet were necessary.

But while the first Act was engaging enough (having Scrooge walk home "through" the crowd of the audience and "stop" someone to tell him that he owed Scrooge money was an entertaining way of breaching the divide between actor and audience), the play seemed to lack definition. It had its funny moments and farcical ones (the introduction of three very random nuns walking around with collecting mugs saying "Money for the poor *clink clink*, money for the poor *clink clink*!" and overreacting with hilarious flourishes to everything around them was a particularly good example), but not enough of them to make the play an out-and-out comedy. It had elements of the pantomime (a cross-dressing nun, music, a puppet playing Tiny Tim, audience involvement) but it was not nearly outrageous nor interactive enough to be one. Thus it seemed like a play searching for what it wanted to be, and while John, Vivvy and I found it good enough, it did not seem like it would be a production that would stick in our minds for long.


In the end, however, the second Act improved greatly upon the first. Vivienne and I enjoyed the sudden surrealism of the scene where the Ghost of Christmas Future showed Scrooge the two cold and hard businessmen, Mr Dealer and Mr Potts, discussing his death. With Mr Potts counting out his money on a table made up of a female member of the cast bent over and balancing a wooden plank on her back and Mr Dealer himself clearly consisting of one member of the cast balancing on top of the shoulders of another cast member who was covered under the very long coat and who stuck his own hand out of the coat fastenings in order to take money off Mr Potts whilst the two characters traded knowing greedy remarks over a few cigars, the scene was already odd enough. But it was made even more bizzare when, every time the two characters laughed, they would flap their arms open and closed and cackle with laughter in a sound reminiscent of ravens or crows cawing and Mr Potts would end off their show of hilarity by banging his tin cup on the "table" he had before him and making the woman underneath scream in a half-moan of pain.

It was marvelously surreal, like something out of the best sort of Mad Hatter/Tim Burton-esque nightmare: crazed, whimsical and dark. Vivienne and I were tickled pink with enjoyment.

In addition, all three of us enjoyed the very last scenes of Scrooge's redemption, when the cast suddenly broke down the fourth wall between the actors as actors and the actors as their characters. The actor who was playing the character of one of Scrooge's tenants was still on stage when the two nuns made their reappearance, only for them to stop just on-stage and stare pointedly at him before he realized that he was supposed to be the third nun and rushed off stage to get changed. And it happened many times after that, with even Scrooge getting in on the act to say "Here comes my nephew, Fred" and sending the poor hapless man staggering off into the wings to get dressed into his coattails and coming onstage still with the nun's cap on. Coming as it did at the end of the play, when the audience had been convinced of the seriousness of the production, it was a very random indulgence in pure silliness that sent everyone off into peals of laughter and left Viv, John and I still giggling long after the play ended.

The fact that we left the play going "caw, caw" and singing "humbug, humbug, humbug, humbug" amongst ourselves stands as a testament to our enjoyment of the play, and a wonderful fact of theatre: that even after a play has begun and you think you've figured it out, it can still surprise you with how it decides to unfold.