Butterfly loving

Went to watch Butterfly Lovers. No, not this guy.
These guys.

Performed by the Dama Orchestra. Now let me begin by reminding you of my banana (bananic?) soul. Yes it's a Chinese musical, yes it's an old Chinese folklore, yes it's all in Mandarin. I am certain that there are nuances and concepts and lotsa-other-stuff that I do not get. I am also sure that I may have missed stuff in the fact that I had to keep on reading subtitles. The short of it all is, yes I enjoyed myself - I was entertained. And no, I do not think it was worth the RM92 I paid. The why, and the long of it all? Read on...

The story? Well, it is THE Chinese Romeo & Juliet, so really you can't go wrong. Go to the website for a lowdown. The music? Not bad, generally listenable even though I don't understand. Something I really didn't like was what I'll call the rhythm of the whole performance. You know how there's a general pace of a scene? Action packed = usually fast, melodramatic = usually slow, that kinda thing. Everyone sticks to it, and there's congruence. Slow actions in a fast scene draws attention because of the counterpoint there, and vice versa for a slow scene.

Now the general flow of the performance is slow. Slow as in, yesteryear slow. Very little actually happens. Act 1 is: she goes to school, meets him, and leaves school. Act 2 is: he goes to see her, sees her, dies, then she goes to join him at his grave. This is over 2 hours. There are LOTS of moments where nothing actually happens. Now I don't have a problem with all that - I GET it that it's slow, and I'm very okay with that. What I really didn't like was that the actors weren't getting it. There was no congruence, and that 'bo ngam-ness' of it annoyed me. I'll explain: you are waiting for someone in your living room. You're concerned. You'll pace up and down. You'll sigh. You'll shake your head in irritation, or resignation, or whatever. You'll wring your hands, maybe. But you'll do all this over a LONG period of time. I would liked the person to have picked one or two of these things, done it slowly, and that was that. But no - they would do all of them. The number and speed of actions performed did not match the timing that represented it.

I will again raise the fact that I'm a banana, and that I'm not (yet) big on Chinese drama. I do know that it's common to (what I'd call) overact to represent something. Whatever the reason is, to me it just looks like you're trying to hard to get your point across.

Aside from that, the direction was dodgy in some other parts. I generally didn't like what the cast were doing when they weren't speaking - most especially the ensemble. See below for my rant on their performance. The choreography was... dead dodgy. There were 2 memorable moments of dancing where I went "WTF are they doing?!? Fuck off and let me hear that woman sing dammit!" And the timing of the moves were horrendous. Argh bloody ensemble. Costumes were wonderful though. Everyone looked great, though the wonderful big sleeves proved to be too distracting in the hands of this crew.

The subtitling was generally good. I was wowed by some of the words (courtesy of Edwin Sumun, I believe) - they conveyed the meaning well, if not the poetry. There were a few moments of the subtitling guy falling asleep or the computer falling asleep, and there's the questionable translation of "Ah..." Oh THAT'S what they're saying! But what does it REALLY mean?

The lead, Tan Soo Suan, is spectacular. Awesome voice, even when speaking, and even when contorted in strange positions. Wonderful. I believe that she carried the whole performance. I'd give my balls to sing like her. Oh wait, I might have to.

Edwin Sumun has, as always, such awesome stage presence. He spoke English, which by default made him my best buddy in the performance. He was meant to be the Western influence in the play, I think. His narration provided nice breaks from all the singing and overacting, though his could have been a more interesting characer script-wise.

Jason Lai was the lead male's sidekick, and is apparently the assistant stage manager. Funny thing to do, I would've thought that with such a massive crew they didn't need anyone to double-up jobs. He was one of the more notable actors on stage, where the term "trying too hard" applied more to his character (appropriately) than to the actor. Interesting how sidekicks the world over have the same archetype - quiet, unassuming, smart, knows when not to show it, reliable, hardworking, knows what's going on, funny, knows the right thing to say at the right time, AND gets along well with other sidekicks!

The rest of the lead cast were generally okay, nothing exceptional one way or another. Hated the mother's "worrying hands" though. See 'rhythm & pacing' above and 'sleeves & arms' below.

The ensemble, however, drove me absolutely mad. Stark raving bonkers. I vacillated between running down there with a pair of scissors to cut off all their damned sleeves, and running down there with a bloody big axe to lop off all their damned arms. Mr Stairs-Must-Be-Just-So, Mr Sleeve-Twirler, Mr I'm-Now-Centre-Stage-So-I'm-Superstar, and the various Misters / Missuses who spent forever moving the damn set, thank you for being a most annoying and yet entertaining (after the fact) distraction. I never realised how ridiculous 'trying to look busy' looked until these guys showed me. They could really have done with MUCH more practice, and tighter direction.

I liked the ending scene best. She visits his grave, it's dark and stormy, and after a song or two of lost love and longing, there's images of a butterfly going into the grave and kazam! There's a silhouette of him in there. Mildly eerie, but visually poignant. Unfortunately, after she joins him in, two MONSTROUS butterflies fly out of the grave. You'd expect something light and fluttery and cute, but no... these two mutations of nature slowly float out, ponderously flapping their gigantic wings and terrifying this member of the audience. Jaysus, it's alive! Run for the hills!!!

A final reminder of my bananic-ness. I looked around at the end, and there were many a teary eye. A mostly (if not completely) Chinese crowd, of which about half gave a standing ovation. They absolutely loved it, and felt it, and really connected with it. Sigh... yes, I do need to truly discover my roots. Given that some of my roots comprise of pirates, thugs and gang leaders, how can I go wrong?


Miscellany

The government has decided to reduce the speed limit by 10km/h for the Hari Raya holidays. I should show Pak Lah this video to make him reconsider.

Any U2 lovers out there? The new U2 iPod.

Graduate women more likely to orgasm. Now THERE'S a damned good reason to study hard! Why don't parents tell their kids important things like these? How to motivate lah?

Apparently, you can tell everything (75% of the time) from a person's voice. Height and weight included. Crazy, and interesting. So girls, if he sounds like Tweety Bird on the phone... expect to be disappointed, yah?