Review-Time Moves & My Robot Dream Lover-Deaf Drama Festival
22-11-12
By: Tom Hope
This was a first for me. I’ve watched mime artists perform sketches but never til now a full length narrative told without words on stage. And I loved it.
Well, to tell truth, this show is really 2 separate shows, a ‘double bill’, one each side of a 20 minute interval. And the interval was as fascinating as the onstage drama, the auditorium air vibrating as the hearing/speech impaired audience ‘vocalized’ vigorously but silently. Through each performance, audience members signed their views on the action (or maybe more besides) without disrupting the spectacle. This in itself was a treat for the eyes.
The actors and audience may have been mostly deaf but the onstage drama was fully accessible for all. At the start of Time Moves, we were taught some basic sign language – the ‘words’ for Hong Kong, China, England, government, money and a few more choice expressions – but these were threaded through the narrative so skilfully that by the end I doubted the need to explain them from the outset.
Time Moves, performed by Theatre of the Silence, was - quite simply (and unutterably) – entrancing. An ensemble cast of 1 woman (Grace Cheng) and 4 men (Jeff Ho, Nelson Ng plus co-directors Edward Chan and Edwin Chan) conjured up a history of Hong Kong (from British invasion to post-handover transformation) with no props (just well-judged sound and lighting effects) and such fluent, witty and inventively assured ease that the 1 hour running time shot past leaving me wanting more. As they took their bows, the audience fluttered their hands in the air like vaudeville minstrels by way of applause and my clapping was muted by comparison.
My Robot Dream Lover, directed by Angel Ho from producer Bernard Lee’s script, was also nicely realized but ultimately less successful. The promising set-up (jilted girl’s mum buys in look-a-like robot to substitute the errant lover) didn’t take off into the realms of magic realism (as, for example, ‘Ruby Sparks’ does) to explore the possible highs and lows of cybernetic love.
The set, lighting, sound and other production components were fine. Samuel Lee deserves special mention in doubling as robot and computer nerd but the rest of the cast (Mandy Cheung, Amy Tong and Pan Hui) worked well with and for each other. The narrative was clear though not always consistent with the programme notes. So what was missing?
Perhaps it’s me asking too much from a form which, by renouncing words, is necessarily constrained in how it depicts character development and interaction. Whatever the reason, by the end I was unmoved and disengaged – and surprised to be so, because the potential of the piece seemed so great at the start – by contrast with the elation I felt at the close of Time Moves.
The two shows are very different in style and content (Robot a chamber piece, Time Moves a mock-epic history). If you don’t like the one, you should definitely like the other. All in all, it’s an evening well worth experiencing, no matter how unimpaired your senses.
Part two of The Hong Kong Deaf Drama Festival is playing through November 25th at the Hong Kong Arts Center. For more information please click here.
Comments
Jade
Amazing show! As a hearing impaired person in HK I love that is a show made for me.
22 November 2012Mary
I think this is wonderful. Will be taking my kids to see it. So happy I found out about it. Thanks HKELD!
22 November 2012HIN
Great show. Very inventive. Better than Ruby Sparks!
22 November 2012