The Campaign to Confer a Public Service Star on JBJ
What’s in a name? With a title such as ‘The Campaign to Confer a Public Service Star on JBJ,’ quite a bit. It was bound to raise certain expectations, and if the entire play turns out to be a mere sleight-of-hand, the audience is going to feel cheated. One could argue that this was the point, that the title and the expectations it engendered was really a comment about the power of certain words, about (real or imagined) boundaries and the preconceived notions an audience carries with it into a theater. But no one is going to enjoy being taken for a ride (unless it’s a superbly constructed one).

Part of the problem with the play was an indulgence in double-speak and nudge-nudge wink-wink. There were puns and allusions and dances-around-the-mulberry bush, and by the end of act one, I was left wondering if it was going to be all peep but no show. Tan Tarn How commented in the programme that ‘the craft of beating about the bush is part of the playwright’s arsenal too.’ Fair enough, but clearly, beating about the bush is not an easy craft to master.

So what was Wong gunning at exactly? She teases us with the prospect of a government conspiracy with regard to the JBJ campaign, tells us that what happens to David Lee (the student leader whose brainwave it was to mount the campaign) is not the result of one and then proceeds to present us with a conspiracy anyway. In X-files style, complete with clandestine meetings in a car park. At which point the play tipped dangerously close into the territory of farce.

Despite the murky whole, there were scenes that worked. In the first act, David Lee seeks to harness the power of the internet to rally people to his cause. Wong milks the mr brown episode (in which the on-line blogger is censured when his commentary is carried in a newspaper) for a number of laughs and even lampoons New Age hokey-ness in the process. Even the non-sequiturs were funny.

In the second act, Clara Tang, the bureaucrat “tasked to exercise damage control,” has a hilarious encounter with the Deputy Superintendent (DSP) of the police. This was where the political satirizing was sharpest. As the DSP put it, in the Old Singapore, things were clear since nothing was allowed. The problem with New Singapore and the loosening of constraints was the sudden abundance of grey areas. In the Old Singapore, a memorandum from the “powers that be” would have made clear what was to be done in the matter of David Lee’s case. In the New Singapore, one was not given instructions and yet could not run afoul of the powers that be since constraints, albeit loosened, were still in place. It was enough to make one curl up, hide under one’s desk and suck one’s thumb! This was an over-the-top moment that illustrated perfectly the maddening frustrations of negotiating this New Singapore for the bureaucrat (at heart).

Unfortunately, there were also the dud scenes to sit through. Was there really a need to parody the Singapore Idol auditions? It was a too-easy target (the singing! the judges!) without much of a pay-off.

The bifurcated structure of the play, with its focus on David Lee in the first act and Clara Tang in the second, meant that both actors had to take on a number of roles. Oei’s comic timing and excellent use of accents were most welcome, though the less sympathetic Clara proved to be a harder nut to crack. In contrast, Oliveiro’s David came off as rather bland, and he never seemed to fully inhabit the different roles.

Staging-wise, Heng kept things simple and a few props often successfully conveyed entire settings. However, there were a couple of questionable choices. The video projection was unnecessarily stating the obvious (eg. transition into evening) and served to detract from the play. It was also a strange decision to have Oei announcing the act and scene number, which constantly took the audience out of the play.

So the sum of the uneven parts did not coalesce into a coherent whole. The ending, a dance between David and Clara, is meant to evoke… what exactly? Are they “dancing on graves” as Clara mentioned? What died? The passing of Old Singapore? Clara’s loss of innocence? Was this meant to be a poignant moment between the two? If so, it was not earned, and the play ended, not inappropriately, on an odd, neither-here-nor-there moment.

(For The Flying Inkpot http://inkpot.com/theatre/06reviews/0812,campconfpublserv,bc.html)