I encouraged the Flying Inkpot to publish a negative, but well-written review of 251. (Actually, despite the very instructive criticism that I flirt with the issues without answering them in original ways, she's given us three stars out of a possible five, which I believe is due to the fact that we were reasonably entertaining.)
As always, comments can be added. Click here.
Here's our review from Today newspaper on Monday, 9 April 2007, Plus, p24-25.
I'm not too bothered about his star rating - the performance he saw definitely wasn't one of our best - and he raises the same issue Richard does regarding our superficial efforts to discuss performance art history in Singapore. But it's odd that he feels we should have left out the legendary women segments, which Life! reviewer Hong Xinyi felt were the strongest thematic force in the play. Should I hire a dramaturg to decide?
Check out our first online review (in a Singapore arts journal, anyhow), on Theatrex by editor Richard Chua.
Basically, his main charge against us is that we tried to do too much on stage - which is quite true; there were many themes I wanted to at least touch on and I wasn't able to do them all justice. But I'm surprised at his view that we should have reduced the play to a plain, simple biographical story - no references to Singapore art, politics and censorship. Rich, there are people in the MDA who want to kiss you right now.
Feel free to go to his site and comment on how apt and well-crafted his essay is. :)
Ignatius Low, money editor, has a viewpoint piece in today's Life! about what it was like to view 251 when he knew Grace Quek personally - in fact, he was one of the seven people who witnessed her exorcism, which, as he points out, was not forced upon her (a fact that I didn't quite realise till I read this really good interview with her by Amy Goodman on Nerve.com). Still, it's interesting that he doesn't recall their cell-group as fundamentalist or anything but "happy-clappy".
The title of Low's article is "Fable that's blurry around the edges" (other people write the headers lah), and he says he enjoyed it despite the differences - "Cynthia Lee Macquarrie, cast in the title role, managed to capture any of Grace's defining attributes - how she could be playful and a coquette and yet be serious and idealistic." He's also quite positive about the ideals of the play as a whole - "It's about the anger, loneliness and self-doubt that a Singaporean always feels when taking the path less-travelled."
He also mentioned that other contemporaries of Quek snapped up tickets to examine me. Wah lau, now I'm really nervous. I suppose I have to be glad that Loretta decided not to have us do a Q&A afterwards.
UPDATE: Even better - turns out that it was Ignatius's article on Annabel Chong as National Icon all those months back which prompted Loretta to renew her efforts to have this play created.
Ooh, and on today's Life! on page 15, we've got Hong Xinyi's review of the play - rather balanced , but on the whole positive: it mentions both the pluses and minuses of the show.
Also, there's a leetle article on the "was-it-or-wasn't-it" censorship of the prologue (the censored lines are now printed for all of ST's readership to see! Brace yourself for a religious riot!).
