REVIEW / THEATRE

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Teater Ekamatra

Esplanade Theatre Studio

Last Saturday

Hari Raya Aidilfitri is a time for feasting after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and also for forgiving the slights of friends and family.

But how many spare a thought for the forgotten in society, such as the abused?

In this revival of Singaporean playwright Aidli Mosbit's work, which was first performed at the Esplanade's inaugural Pesta Raya in 2002, the focus is on six such forgotten people: Syaiful (Hatta Said), whose more successful wife Aida beats him up; Adam the philanderer (Farez Najid), who bashes his wife for being a nag; Daud the drug addict (Al-Matin Yatim); Asha (Munah Bagharib), who seduces married man Zai but then grows weary of their subterfuge; Junita (Farhana M. Noor), whose husband Syed Salim is big on bondage sex; and poor little rich girl Nina (Suhaili Safari), whose father has been having sex with her since she was 10 years old.

"Main" (pronounced mah-yeign) is Malay for "play", and this work revolves around the games people play to test their very human limits, beginning with innuendos such as putting pebbles in holes.

A fresh cast of fast-rising stars who brought their best game to this play ensured that Aidli's observations stung, including "Why do we give our life, everything, for only love? And why don't we love ourselves?"

Aidli, who also directed this run, paced her actors' narratives well, while not allowing any among them to pause too long. This meant that a lot was going on at once, but the cast's firm grasp of their multiple characters, speaking mostly in Malay with a smattering of English, held everything together.

Even in this dream cast, there were stand-outs. Farhana, who last thrilled in Teater Kami's sleeper hit 28.8 in April, commanded attention every time she came on. Her nailing of nuances was all the more remarkable as she spoke most of her lines in a resigned drone.

Her deeply felt presence was complemented by Suhaili as Nina, who has gone stir-crazy from incest. Suhaili consistently struck the right balance between being winsome and sly, which took skill as her lines were the most maudlin.

The test as to how immersive the cast was came halfway through the show, when they had an unplanned intermission of 15 minutes for the theatre managers to fix a surtitling glitch. When the play resumed, the spell was unbroken.

Akbar Syadiq's set was a playground complete with monkey bars, a slide, a see-saw, a swing and a floor of fragmented patterns. Simple but functional, it enabled a whole host of entertaining interpretations of the script, including Al-Matin planking on the swing while singing R. Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly and Farhana undulating in between the monkey bars to depict effectively her character's experience with a sadomasochistic husband.

As the emasculated Syaiful, seasoned actor Hatta chilled everyone to the bone when he recounted how his character retaliates against his wife. Sound designer James Lye's well-calibrated dull throbs enhanced the experience a lot and, overall, his deft fade-ins and -outs of favourite Malay pop tunes had everyone basking in deluded innocence.

That could not be said of light designer Lim Woan Wen's overt touches, which cheapened the actors' skills, such as when Hatta snapped from his wife's haranguing. Lim's screaming-red starburst backdrop for this moment was a big fail.

Aidli's knowing humour hit the spot every time, most notably in two scenes: The first was a send-up of stilted Malay soap operas, in which a wife confronts her cheating husband. The second was set in a Malay court of old, where the fictitious "Sultan Zakaria the Violent" (Hatta) begins fancying his own daughter. These were such a hoot, but all the laughing from this also brought home the sheer awfulness of the circumstances being played out. Aidli understands well how comedy is tragedy's flip side. As Junita cries at one point: "Why are the people we hurt most the ones we love most?"

The one quibble with this vital and intelligent production was why it had such a short run - four days in all, ending yesterday - and in a small space to boot. Aidli's play deserves wider recognition, especially if it inspires society to find ways to help the abused heal.