Review-Resurrection: A Dialogue-Pokfulam Rd Productions
29-8-14
By: Joyce Wong
“The most interesting question I got tonight was: You’re putting on a play in a shop?” That’s exactly what Jingan Young (The T-group, FILTH), the Artistic Director and Producer of Pokfulam Rd Productions, did last night in collaboration with Aesop Skincare at Aesop Elements with a piece of site-specific theatre—Resurrection: A Dialogue. For thirty minutes, in a space of about 300 square feet, the crowd stood against bottles of shampoos, gels and essence oil to watch three actors perform around a large, central, rectangular table/sink.
Composed of three scenes—“Past”, “Future”, and “Present”—the play featured recurring characters Paul (Desmond Lam), Julia (Meaghan McGurgan), and Marie (Suhani Jain) resurrecting as different versions of themselves, à la Cloud Atlas style in indeterminate eras. Though returning as changed personalities each time, the trio is repeatedly stuck in a problematic triangular dynamic.
In “Past”, Paul appears an early 20th century bourgeois playboy caught in a conflict to give up his lover Julia to Marie, her homosexual admirer; in “Future”, love appears hopeless and obsolete for all with the mention of a new drug that suppresses love; in “Present”, Paul confesses to Julia that he had unwittingly dated Marie before, thereby ruining the love/hate relationship between the girls. Concentrated on words rather than action, the play is, as its title, a dialogue about the problems in love and human relationship.
The resurrection of these problems in each scene shows that they transcend temporal boundaries as part of the human condition. The play, however, does not explore this theme thoroughly; but given its length, it did manage to sketch this ambitious idea. The title Resurrection, the recurring characters with the same name and costume and the indication of temporal setting before each scene with cardboard signs definitely helped with understanding.
Some lengthy dialogues were hard to digest, but there were some good lines of humor—“But you’re not a poet, you’re just unemployed.”—as well as thought-provoking banter. The actors delivered in smooth and natural performance with good projection, especially Meaghan McGurgan, who spoke her lines from the floor in much of the first two scenes. Desmond Lam handled his lengthy passages in “Future” well as a jittery transhuman high on stimulant.
The “Future” scene stood out as the most interesting section. The characters appear to be transhumans with Paul mentioning ten “upgrades” to be the surgical standard. The reference still to Blade Runner makes one wonder how far into the future we’re facing. The characters are too jaded to feel in the future, with Paul only knowing love from hearsay and movies. Julia’s mention of a new drug that suppresses love provokes his desire to lose control and feel again. The scene ends with Julia and Marie joining hands to follow suit.
Resurrection connotes hope and new beginnings and I wonder if “Future” could not have also worked as the ending scene. The threesome in want of a new life at the end of scene two definitely presents more hope than Julia’s realization of betrayal and the trio’s relationship impasse at the end of “Present”.
As a piece of site-specific theatre, there could have been much more interaction between the actors and their environment. Besides Julia’s physical theatre with the table/sink in “Past”, the props, and the space as a whole, wasn’t used much for the sake of the plot. The lighting was quite dim and remained the same throughout. Some variation or spotlighting could have helped to change up the scenes. The static lighting, however, might have been a restriction of the shop; which leads to how the play could have worked more specifically with these restrictions for a better effect. Considering the drama’s general temporal settings, the performance site is probably not meant to be a contextual container. Rather I think, the play’s site-specificity explored the potential to put on a play about anything anywhere.
For one night only a play was put on in a skincare shop. With just a little more than a month’s preparation, Resurrection: A Dialogue is an encouraging attempt for site-specific theatre in Hong Kong. It’d be great to see this happen more often in more everyday spaces across the city in the future.
Resurrection: A Dialogue has now closed. For more information, click here.
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