TODAY ONLINE press review for THE SPIRITS PLAY

Online Only - Theatre Review: The Spirits Play
Re-staged classic work by Kuo Pao Kun is a beautiful, haunting and rewarding experience

by Mayo Martin
06:10 AM Aug 15, 2009

During the latter part of The Spirits Play, one of the characters compares the image of millions of worms chewing on the bodies of dead soldiers to silkworms chewing on mulberry leaves.

It's an unsettling yet, for me at least, extremely beautiful juxtaposition of two images that makes you recoil in horror as much as it inevitably draws you in.

Which sums up my feelings watching the re-staging of this particular play by the late Kuo Pao Kun unfold.

The Spirits Play is a fitting "debut" production from the newly-formed group Traditions and Editions Theatre Circus, which is comprised of former students of Theatre Training and Research Programme, the education programme Kuo co-founded.

Written in 1998, it revolves around six spirits seemingly in a state of limbo and looking for a way "home". In the meantime, each of them takes turns recounting his or her own personal tale about the horrors of the last century's Pacific War that eventually link up to a its heartrending climax.

From a nurse's tragic story of being gang-raped by soldiers on her side, to a soldier recounting the complete massacre of his fellow men-at-arms, The Spirits Play makes us confront some complicated issues that are still very much timely - the moral ambiguity of war, clashing perspectives of what can be considered a victory or otherwise.

The "heavy" stuff is buffered by two legends, reenacted in a humourous fashion: A mythical beast with cannibal instincts and a mythical selfless bird who sacrifices itself during a drought.

Director Kok Heng Leun has opted to "slice open" the monologues and seemingly veers towards abstraction.

He intersperses Kuo's texts with those of his actors and strips down the play to its essence by way of Noh theatre's stylised approach.

But most importantly, he breaks it wide open by turning it into a multilingual production (English, Malayalam, Spanish, Hakka, Cantonese and Japanese) by a multicultural cast from Singapore, Taiwan, Mexico, India, Hong Kong and India.

The result is a situation that is free from the baggage of any one particular historico-linguistic context, consequently underscoring the universality of the theme of war.

That said, I was not particularly convinced by the inclusion of the actors' own anecdotal monologues into the piece. Given the already forceful, poetic, and complete voice of Kuo's text, I wondered if they were needed at all.

While there were some solid acting going on - particularly Andy Ng as the gung-ho, blinkered General and Lin Pei-Ann (Themis) as a grieving wife in search of her husband - it is the experience of simply sitting through one of Kuo's classic plays (renegotiated through Kok's eyes and, I should hasten to add, complemented greatly by the ethereal soundscapes of The Observatory's Leslie Low and Vivian Wang) that is, in the final instance, the ultimate reward.

Here's to the next Kuo Pao Kun staging by TETC.


The Spirits Play runs until Sunday, 8pm at NAFA Studio Theatre, Campus 3, 151 Bencoolen Street With 3pm weekend matinees. Tickets at $28 from Sistic. Multilingual, with English and Mandarin surtitles.

Creative Lab, a series of performances inspired by The Spirits Play, will also be held on Aug 20 to 23, 8pm, at the same venue. With 3pm matinees. Admission is free, with priority entry for The Spirits Play ticket stub holder.