review by Richard Lord

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an amateur theatre company blessed with a flock of thespians eager to tread the boards must be in want of a play calling for a large cast. (I use that term “amateur” not as any indication of talent but of financial resources; if you are amateur, you don’t have to pay actors, so the more, the merrier.)

This stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s ever popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, is a favourite of acting schools around the English-speaking world, and it proved a rather good choice for ACSian Theatre, a troupe which is a mix of Asian-Chinese Junior College graduates, current students and faculty members. (This time around, the cast was, with but two exceptions, current students.)

It was a good choice for several reasons, the most obvious being its sizeable cast. Another reason is that Austen’s story presents a rather undemanding view of love which falls nicely into the emotional range of Singapore junior college students as it celebrates love overcoming a series of neatly placed obstacles. Then there is the fact that the cast of characters is mainly young or youngish people and the oldsters in the assembly allow themselves to be played broadly — as they were here. Finally, P&P is a period piece, something young actors usually love to throw themselves into. As a bonus, the period in question is distant enough from us to keep others from feeling proprietorial about it.

The period that this play visits is Regency England, a roughly two-decade stretch of the early 19th century. Britain at that time was a society that bore a number of intriguing similarities to present-day Singapore: like the Island Republic, Britain in the early 19th century was a nation which had just undergone several decades of rapid industrialisation, transforming it from a largely agrarian and maritime country into an economic powerhouse. These changes produced a flood of new wealth, which jostled with the old money for prestige, influence and social position. For instance, in this play, some members of the old aristocracy sneer openly at the Bennett family because Mrs Bennett’s brother has actually stooped to making his comfortable living as an attorney.

Coupled with these changes were a swarm of social frictions and confusions as new money, new social dynamics and new, “dangerous” influences from abroad brought rapid changes to the country. Strong, deeply held traditions and time-encrusted customs persisted, but they were frequently challenged by those who questioned the value of many of these traditions and customs. The result: a rather civilised clash of pride and prejudices from different sides.

ACSian theatre directors Geetha Creffield, Michelle Wong and their cast were evidently able to key in on these similarities and use it to their advantage in bringing life to Austen’s world. As a result, the company did not seem to be thrashing about in a play completely foreign to them and their sensibilities.

Austen’s novel and this adaptation focus primarily on the Bennett family, a brood residing in a comfortable country home in Hertfordshire. As the Bennett offspring consists entirely of females, Mr and Mrs Bennett are intent on finding suitable husbands for their daughters to save them from penury or (perhaps worse) forced employment.

The drama, as such, springs from the attraction to and wooing of eldest daughter Jane by handsome Charles Bingley, who boasts both a fine pedigree and a sizeable fortune and the romantic jousting between Elizabeth, second eldest daughter, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, who just happens to be both wealthier and more handsome than Bingley, his best friend. But Darcy is much less congenial than his friend— some might even say abrasive. And then there’s the sub-plot of young British officer George Wickham, who’s ready to take any Bennett female he can snatch.

As the Bennetts are not independently wealthy and their blood is nowhere near the right shade of blue, aristocrats like Bingley and Darcy must overcome some social major hurdles if they wish to “marry down” with the two most appealing women in all Hertfordshire. But Pride and Prejudice is a kind of proto-romantic comedy, so everything works out in the end and true love again conquers all. Even the serial scoundrel George Wickham seems to achieve decency after he first runs off with but then finally weds the youngest Bennett daughter, Lydia. (In Regency romances, marriage had a way of turning scoundrels into decent fellows.)

It is not an easy piece to pull off successfully. The good news is that the ACSian cast was able to handle the work reasonably well — considering their youth and dearth of acting experience. Fortunately, they had the central role of Elizabeth Bennett covered by the best performer in this production — Lesley Sia. One has to combine natural charm, feistiness, stubbornness and a smidgeon of foolishness to build a complete Elizabeth Bennett — and never once make the character disagreeable. Lesley Sia would certainly not make us forget Keira Knightly in the successful film or Jennifer Ehle in the the highly popular British TV mini-series, but she did serve up a quite credible Elizabeth.

Nicholas Ngo’s Darcy was a bit more of a mixed performance. Early on, it seemed that the major source of young Darcy’s discomfort was not the limited sophistication of the country folk at the big ball, but the costume he was in. Stiff and tentative, Ngo seemed to be trapped in that costume and not quite sure how to get himself out of it. As a result of this, and the way he misplayed his lines, Darcy came off as not sullen but nasty in that all-important first scene. This created an even greater climb than usual for this character to get back to our sympathy.

As the show moved along, Ngo did recover from his early gaffes and ended up with an acceptable performance. As his bosom buddy Bingley, Dheraj Ramchandani had a tendency to bark out his lines in trying to capture the essence of the consummate 18th century English gentleman. He, too, managed to be acceptable after all was said and done, but there was nothing memorable in this Bingley other than his puppy-like energy.

A more believable and balanced performance came from Edlyn Ng as Jane Bennett, the object of Bingley’s desire. Ms Ng took the turns and jolts of Jane’s fortunes fairly well for a young performer.

A number of the smaller roles were ably handled, adding to the enjoyable quality of this production. The standout here (though not necessarily the best) was Frances Lee’s bravura turn as Mrs Bennett. Lee was quite enjoyable in the role, and made her presence strongly felt in almost every scene she turned up in. One has to especially admire and strongly praise the way Lee was able to strain her voice from start to finish of this long evening in order to effect the shrill quality of Mrs Bennett speech. That annoying voice is a major part of the character and her family’s shaky social position.

More nuanced performances (in smaller parts) were turned in by Sarah Ann Lee as Mary Bennett, Lian Kim Selby as Caroline Bingley and Jasmin Wong as Charlotte Lucas. Each of these actresses deserved a strong nod of praise.

The same goes to two of the male performers in supporting roles. Gideon Yap’s Wickham was more consistently successful than either Bingley of Darcy here, while Mark Cheng proved a rather reliable anchor as Mr Bennett. Young Master Cheng’s pater familias somehow bore a passing resemblance to the late British actor Robert Morley (who would have been quite good in this role himself). One unfortunate loss: Frances Lee, who was otherwise one of the show’s main assets as Mrs Bennett, allowed her histrionics to bury Mr. Bennett’s wonderfully funny closing line about sending in any other young men who may want to ask for yet another daughter’s hand in marriage. This was a clear example of one actor stepping on another’s moment.

Other aspects of this production merited mixed praise. Chia Yu Hsien’s set design was quite admirable, simple, but effective. The stage started off festooned with silhouettes suggesting the Regency period, and Chia’s overall arrangement allowed a play with many scene changes, and the resulting set changes, come off with barely a seam showing.

The costumes were more suggestive of a time in the distance past than authentic, but they worked — with one exception. Lady de Bourgh (played by Rebecca Kwan) comes out in Act II decked out like an upper-class 1920’s lady, making her look like she had just wandered in from some other play and was trying to hide with that embarrassment with great gusts of peevishness.

The artistic direction, apparently a joint effort of Geetha Creffield and Michelle Wong, was mixed. As suggested above, the directors were able to get acceptable to quite good performances from a large number of young actors, no small achievement. On the other hand, blocking and general movements were a bit stagey throughout, which added to a sense of strain and artifice. One puzzling strategy was, to have key characters take a stance at some distance from his other during pivotal confrontations, thus dialling down the power of those encounters.

There were also a few other directorial miscalculations. For instance, music and dance are an important part of the story (as they were an important part of early 19th century British social life). The ACSian production opened with a dance — but as pretty much the whole bounteous cast had assembled, there was too much traffic on stage for the scene to work well.

Rather than having lively 19th century music, the directors opted for contemporary music and dance. This was not disturbing in and of itself; you could readily accept that here were young people enjoying themselves and connecting in a way natural to them. However, there were too many dance scenes used as transitions through the evening. By late in the second act, these dance numbers seemed rather extraneous, more distractions from the action than adjuncts, but still they went on. And on a related note, it was a mistake to have Mr. Bennett dancing in the early ball scene while Mrs Bennett stands off to the side as an observer. Both host and hostess would have taken their positions to the side in the society being portrayed here.

One other rather unfortunate directorial choice: at a most important point in that early ball scene, one of the guests delivered a truncated rendition of the Cyndi Lauper hit “Time After Time”. The singing was quite pleasant itself, but it made it rather hard to catch the important exchange going on at precisely that point between the central scoundrel George Wickham and the Bennett ladies. This was just one example of where frills infringed on substance in this show. A show which was, for all of that, a very nice effort.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Within a fortnight of ACSian’s foray into Jane Austen territory, a new theatrical venture with the imposing Anglo-Saxon name of Wessex Theatre took on an even bigger gun in the British Lit cannon with its Shakespeare in Love.

Actually, a number of the faces in Wessex will be familiar to habitués of Stage Club productions: this group is an outgrowth of that venerable Singapore amateur theatre, founded by members who apparently wanted to pursue their theatrical interests on a more professional basis.

The show they’ve set forth with, a frisky Shakespeare anthology piece, was actually done in an earlier incarnation (in 2000) by the Stage Club itself. This time, as with the earlier show, the pieces were assembled and stitched together by Wessex co-founder Phil McConnell.

When you take on the Bard, you either set yourself an impossible task or you guarantee yourself success. By taking on some of the easier challenges Shakespeare offers, Wessex guaranteed itself a reasonable success.

The show had eight main components to it, key scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, with smaller bits of the sonnets and speeches from other plays thrown in for seasoning. The eight main components were themselves drawn from seven plays, one of them a famous play within a play.

The show opened with a nice solo rendering of “When I Fall in Love”, sung by Paul Hannon, another of the group’s founders. While it wasn’t exactly Elizabethan, it was not at all jarring and it set the mood for the evening nicely. I am not sure if, in choosing this tune, the producers were embracing the notion that all is fair is love and war, but this song does come from an early 1950’s war film.

The show then shifted from song into Theseus’ speech from Midsummer Night’s Dream about “the lunatic, the lover and the poet/ Are of imagination one compact”. This then segued into a scene from the same play, wherein Demetrius and Lysander both pursue Hermia while Helena despairs. From there, the show jumped about largely at will, following inclination rather than any logic or thematic connection.

Dramaturg Phil McConnell (that seems to be the most appropriate term for the role he played in this show) made some interesting and praiseworthy choices. For instance, he scratched some too-obvious selections from his list, such as the done-to-death Romeo and Juliet or Twelfth Night. From the rich body of texts where unlikely lovers are pulled — or thrown — together, he sidestepped the wildly humorous Taming of the Shrew and chose the wry, nuanced scenes from Much Ado About Nothing where Beatrice and Benedick are drawn to each other despite their own deeply held disdain for love and marriage.

McConnell also selected two compelling scenes from Measure For Measure, that quintessential problem play, where love is seen to be both liberating and life-threatening, often at the same time.

But not all of the dramaturg’s decisions were to be applauded. For instance, he only included that one short lovers’ scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream. At first, I thought we would come back to this thread later to see how the criss-crossing relationships develop throughout the play. The scene doesn’t really work as a stand-alone piece; in the event, it came off as a rather limp opening to this compendium.

Rather than follow the four lovers in their dizzy journey to joyous weddings, McConnell went with two other scenes from the same play: those where the rude mechanicals are assigned their parts for the star-crossed playlet they plan to offer for the Duke’s wedding and then that wonderfully disastrous performance itself.

This was a bit of cheating actually, if we are charting Master Shakespeare on love. True, the Pyramus and Thisbe sketch deals with love, but the scene is more a comic jab at bad theatre than a real look at love. Having said that, it is also clear why the Wessex team chose these scenes: they were little comic gems as they performed them and proved the top audience-pleasers of the evening.

They also displayed some of the only truly imaginative directorial concept in the production. After a platter of sequences with standard directorial approach, McConnell and cast dug into interesting corners with these two famous bits. For instance, the rude mechanicals were recast as schoolboys of widely varying enthusiasms while Peter Quince served as the weary faculty member heading their drama society.

The other scene in Shakespeare on Love which offered a novel concept was a chunk from Antony and Cleopatra where the queen of Egypt awaits her lover Antony, only to receive reports of his forced marriage to a prominent Roman lady.

In this scene, moved from the early days of the Roman Empire to the Roaring Twenties, Cleopatra was cast as a rapidly fading flapper clinging to her past as a legendary lover, suggesting Sunset Boulevard on the Nile.

I doubt that either this interpretation or the one for Midsummer Night’s Dream would hold up for the whole play if it were extended to the entire work, but as interesting forays in this anthology, they worked nicely, offering a refreshing and engaging respite from the standard stagings of the other segments.

Starting out with juicy texts from Shakespeare is one leg high up on a successful show, but then you need a cast that can handle the Bard or you could be facing a disaster. For this opening production, the Wessex troupe was able to assemble a reasonably good cast that was well able to handle Shakespeare, at least in the portions that got dished out in this show.

The best in show was Justin Lee, who was convincing and accomplished in all six of the roles he handled. (Actually, he was rather stiff in one of those roles–but he was playing a wall there, so it was quite fitting.)

Lee was especially compelling as Angelo, the dark-hearted judge of Measure For Measure. This is a part that requires layers of tight emotions, held together with deceptions and self-deceptions. Lee was able to capture all of this and made his Angelo loathsome, threatening … and a tad sympathetic. No easy achievement, that.

Lee was aided in these scenes by Julie Wee, who deftly handled the role of Isabella, the committed ultra-virgin who emerges from a convent to plead for the life of her brother. This brother has been caught committing fornication with his fiancée, in a gothic Vienna where all fornication has been declared a capital crime. Wee was touching and convincing as Isabella, providing a strong moral balance to Lee’s Angelo.

Julie Wee was also pretty solid in her other three roles, and really proved her acting chops as Robin Starveling portraying “moonshine”. As Bill Ledbetter (as Bottom) took Pyramus way over the top in the rude mechanicals’ playlet, Wee was a brilliant witness to the mayhem. With just a quick jerk of the head and a stunned look, she added another sharp dimension to this scene, which proved one of the most successful of the evening.

Bill Ledbetter’s contributions to this evening were a strange compact. In his first turn, as Lysander, he was quite a dud (as opposed to a dude). Reciting his lines with a vague, tentative tone and moving about unsurely, he was the main reason why that opening scene was such a limp exercise. At that point, I was wondering what he was doing in the show.

By the time he next emerged, as Benedick in Much Ado, it was clear what he was doing there. Ledbetter handled that love cynic with polish, assurance and a splendid sense of comic timing. In his final appearance, as Nick Bottom in the two Rude Mechanicals’ scenes, Ledbetter stretched himself towards the heights of comedy and made Bottom one of the hits of the evening.

Cordelia Fernandez Lee proved a splendid foil to Ledbetter’s Benedick in Much Ado. Her Beatrice was a wonderful blend of fire and softness, an assured woman who will only bend her will when it is her will to do so. Fernandez Lee was fine in her other two roles, though she did rush her lines a bit as Cleo’s maidservant in the Antony and Cleopatra scene. But as these were only supporting roles, we sadly never got to see her at full force again in the show. (Speaking of support, the two main characters were nicely supported by Musa Fazal and Steve Armstrong in the Much Ado confrontations.)

After delivering that sweet opening song, Wessex co-founder Paul Hannon proved that he can act at least as well as he can sing. In a weak segment from The Tempest, his Ferdinand was clearly the performance that kept the whole thing floating. The young lover’s admission that “For several reasons, I have loved several women line” was delivered quite effectively by Hannon, making it sound more like fate than a character flaw.

Later on, he proved effective support as the Messenger in Antony and Cleopatra and was a howl as Flute playing an outrageously camp Thisbe.

The reason why that Tempest section was one of the show’s three weak spots was that Ferdinand simply cannot carry the scenes alone: he needs a strong Miranda and Prospero to share the burden. (Even if he is the one carrying the heavy lumber.) As Miranda, Lily McConnell had a tendency to rush her lines — sometimes rushing quite a bit, in fact. And though she did show some feel for the character, she never really connected with Hannon’s Ferdinand — which turns the Tempest into something tepid.

Tim Dore was rather adequate as Prospero, but you need much more than adequate with that character around whom just about everything else pivots. Elsewhere in the evening, Dore did a decent job reading snippets from the Bard, but he really came into his own as the weary schoolmaster Peter Quince. Despite the strength of Bill Ledbetter’s Bottom there, Dore managed to keep a steady hand on the helm of that scene and was one key reason it was so damn effective.

Like Cordelia Fernandez Lee, Maureen McConnell had three minor supporting roles and one moment in the spotlight. The latter was as Cleopatra in that Jazz Age version of the role. McConnell was good in conveying the sense of a former ingénue unwilling to give up that role, but she was something less than credible in those moments which called for Cleo to erupt into fits of violent temper. Luckily, those weak moments were short enough to make her one big scene fairly successful.

Stephanie van den Driesen, on the other hand, was successful every time she walked out. Her spurned Helena almost made that opening scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream work and her later incarnation as schoolboy Snug and his reluctant and apologetic lion was one of the reasons the last two sections from the Dream worked like a dream.

And then there was her Desdemona. No fault of hers, but the Othello scenes were one of the least successful portions of the evening. These scenes were also an example of how some fairly commendable talents — Musa Fazal as Othello, Steve Armstrong as Iago, van den Driesen as Desdemona, Justin Lee as Cassio and … oh yes, Shakespeare, could come together in an unsuccessful manner.

Musa Fazal has a natural physical awkwardness that he can actually use to his advantage in many roles, but here it worked against his Othello. Moreover, this was accentuated by the costume he was thrown into: padded shoulders and tightly buttoned uniform gave him an appearance like the Frankenstein monster performing in Arms and The Man. The overall effect was to undercut the cut-to-the-quick reading he gave to the lines.

Steve Armstrong was better as Iago, though his reading was pitched too much at a hectoring, almost bullying tone. This Iago was just too strong, pushing Othello as if he were his commanding officer rather than vice versa. We saw none of the evil cleverness, the conniving that makes Iago such a convincing and despicable villain.

As mentioned, Justin Lee’s Cassio was admirable, and Stephanie van den Driesen was sympathetic and believable as the fated Desdemona. But as the Othello scenes in this show focused on the interaction between Iago and his too easily manipulated General, the segment did not really work until Othello entered Desdemona’s bed chamber to send her into an eternal sleep.

The evening closed out with bits from Sonnets 116 and 130 as well as Puck’s little speech calling for applause.

The production values were low-budget and pretty much unobtrusive. The set was minimalist and weighted towards the purely functional. The lighting, too, was little more than functional; none of the lighting effects contributed much to the scenes they served other than to keep them illuminated.

The costumes were also minimalist or, in the case of Othello, unfortunate. Except for the Cleopatra and Rude Mechanicals’ scenes, the direction focused on forming strong characterisation and effective reading of the lines with scant attention to the visuals.

The accompanying music was one technical aspect which did add value to the show, at points quite nicely. For instance, Edvard Grieg’s folksy, upbeat “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen” served as the transitional music in the Much Ado About Nothing scenes, while strains of Tchaikovsky’s love theme from Romeo and Juliet played over the Pyramus and Thisbe playlet, a perfect bit of ironic counterpoint to the fiasco the rude mechanicals were presenting.

There was one strange note in the use of music here: Ariel’s song from The Tempest (“Full fathom five…”) had little ethereal about it, save for the flute playing. The effect that it was supposed to have on Ferdinand was therefore more puzzling than enchanting.

On balance, the Wessex Theatre company can take a bow for a somewhat successful début — though by no means a runaway success. This edition of Shakespeare on Love would have been more praiseworthy if it had been structured a little more tightly, perhaps with clear movement between one scene and the next or a definite thread tying together the different parts. And if the problems in the first Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello and Tempest scenes had been more carefully addressed. (For instance, the latter probably would have been better if Phil McConnell himself had stepped in as Prospero.)

But it was an enjoyable, mildly impressive show that bodes well for the future of this ambitious fledgling theatre. Now that they have cleared the Bard, let us see where they go from here.