THEATRE

BULL

Wild Rice

Wild Rice @ Funan, Jan 8

British playwright Mike Bartlett's play is like a third-rate version of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, with a half-hearted grab from Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman.

Unfortunately, it is but a pale shadow of the coruscating fury of Mamet and the twilit grandeur of Miller.

Three colleagues are poised around an office desk, awaiting the arrival of their boss and the impending retrenchment of one of them.

Minutes into the play, and it is evident that Tony (Brian Nai) and Isobel (Selma Alkaff), the better-groomed, better-looking duo, have ganged up on Thomas (Dennis Sofian).

The nitpicking begins with small malicious snipes - is that your best suit, there's something on your forehead, what does your father do? It spirals into weird power games before the boss (Oniatta Effendi) arrives and drops the expected axe.

One might expect the themes - retrenchment, gaslighting, cliques - to resonate in these globalised times. But Bartlett's dialogue never rises beyond the schoolyard bullying tone to discover something deeper, more primal.

The cast try their best. Nai shows off his abs in the power game; Alkaff works her stiletto heels and icy stare; Sofian shuffles around with the hunch of the perpetually hunted.

But there is no space in the script for nuance. Tony is simply the sleek predator, Isobel a willing co-conspirator and Thomas the flailing victim.

The narrative seems to exist simply for the playwright to write mean lines that provoke outrage but little else. The character of Isobel seems to be female just so the playwright can introduce unforgivably exploitative lines about sex abuse. There is little excavation of the characters' motives beyond the claustrophobic confines of this one episode.

By the end of the play, when Isobel harangues Thomas and finally goads him into physical violence, there is no catharsis - simply exhaustion with the script's shallow shouting.