Definition of “Blithe”: carefree and happy and lighthearted (taken from here)

…

Local theatre group W!LD RICE’s latest offering sees them reviving Noel Coward’s comic masterpiece Blithe Spirit at the Drama Centre Theatre @ National Library.

(Random thought: Why does Selena Tan look so much like Chen Liping in the publicity photo?)

Written by Coward in 1941, this local adaptation is directed by the acclaimed local director Glen Goei, and stars local theatre luminaries such as Lim Kay Siu, Neo Swee Lin, Tan Kheng Hua, Selena Tan, Pam Oei, Gerald Chew and Celine Rosa Tan. (In fact, that’s the entire cast right there.)

This local adaptation was first staged in 2001 to mark Goei’s move home from London to Singapore.

…

Impressions

Let me first start with my overall impressions: I would say that I was moderately entertained by the play.

Not extremely entertained, but just moderately.

I attribute this to a variety of reasons, from my discomfort with certain details in the plot, to the limited range of some of the main characters, to my feeling that somehow this local adaptation of what is intrinsically a very British play didn’t really come off too well.

I shall explain further.

…

Acting

The play centres around three main characters – a couple played by Lim Kay Siu and Neo Swee Lin…and the third is a former wife of Lim Kay Siu’s (played by Tan Kheng Hua) who plays the role of a ghost who comes back from the “other world” to revisit Kay Siu in his Bukit Timah bungalow (hence the “blithe spirit”).

Now I thought Tan Kheng Hua played her role really well, capturing the very essence of what it means to be “blithe”, i.e. carefree, happy, lighthearted. She did this really well.

However, I just felt that Lim Kay Siu and Neo Swee Lin, for all their good comic timing, didn’t really possess that range of volume which was required at certain moments in the play. Let’s put it this way: During moments which required an fff, they were more like f. It seemed to me like they could never really go louder than an f. (I’m referring to the terms used in musical dynamics, in case you were wondering.)

As for Selena Tan, Pam Oei, Gerald Chew and Celine Rosa Tan…well, they were at their usual best. Nothing much to comment about there.

…

Plot

I thought the plot was pretty clever.

The first act was mildy interesting, especially from the moment the old lover Elvira (Tan Kheng Hua) came back to the home of the Kohs as a ghost after a pretty intense seance session led by Madame Arcati (Selena Tan).

However, the humour quickly got a bit stale for me, especially the scenes where Charles (Lim Kay Siu) had to juggle between talking in the same room to his current wife Ruth (Neo Swee Lin) and Elvira, whom Ruth cannot see nor hear. So you can imagine the kind of lines where Charles starts chiding Elvira for her mischievous remarks (which Ruth cannot hear), and Ruth getting angry thinking those remarks were meant for her.

It got pretty stale after awhile.

However, in the second act, things got even more intriguing cos we learn that Elvira actually wishes to kill Charles so that she can have him to her own in the “other world”. However, things go awry when she unwittingly ends up killing Ruth instead of Charles.

There were certain plot points in the play which I didn’t quite understand, like how come when Ruth died, she immediately entered the living room of the Kohs and only Elvira could see her (and Charles could not).

Also, I wasn’t very satisfied with the ending.

***Spoiler Alert!***

In the end, we realise that it was the maid Edith (Pam Oei) who had willed for both the spirits to return to this world.

I left the theatre thinking “huh?!? what sense does that make?!?”

I told my sister that it might have been better if it were, say, Dr Quek (Gerald Chew), who maybe had an affair with both of Charles’s wives, and maybe he could have been the one to will for both Elvira and Ruth to return.

She agreed.

…

Adaptation

I felt that, the play being a play set in England, there was certain lines that didn’t really come out right. As in, some of the lines were so clearly British in their flavour that to hear Lim Kay Siu or Neo Swee Lin deliver them in a non-British setting was rather awkward.

…

Set

The set was magnificent.

It was basically one static set – the living room of the Koh’s Bukit Timah lavish bungalow, but it was very elaborately done.

Much work and effort must have been put into setting up such an impressive-looking set.

…

Well, overall, I’m glad to have attended Blithe Spirit, although I wouldn’t consider it the most enjoyable, or one of the most enjoyable performances I’ve attended.

By the way, I read from Ivan Heng’s forward in the programme that Michael Chiang and Dick Lee’s musical Beauty World will be making a comeback at the Esplanade Theatre in January 2008!

That’s pretty exciting stuff.

Many thanks to W!LD RICE for adding so much colour to our local arts scene.