This Eunuch Admiral has got balls

SINGAPORE — At some point, we may tire of referring to director Jeff Chen as Singapore theatre’s l’enfant terrible and his works as oddball curiosities in the scene’s general scheme of things. But, thankfully, not just yet.

He’s only been back for a short while after a decade-long hiatus but he’s already dishing out left-of-field works like he never left. And in his latest effort, for the Esplanade’s SG50-themed Studios season, Kuo Pao Kun’s revered classic Descendants Of The Eunuch Admiral is put through a delightfully bizzare blender.

Consider, for instance, the audacious sight of a stage set used for the third — yes, third — time. Wong Chee Wai’s elegant court chamber was first seen in Nine Years Theatre’s Twelve Angry Men in 2013 before Chen appropriated it wholesale for his own LIFT: Love Is Flower The later that same year and has brought it back yet again.

That’s just for starters.

There’s a strong allegorical force propelling Kuo’s poetic, introspective work about Zheng He, China’s most famous eunuch-slash-maritime explorer. He had crisscrossed the seas and reached as far as Africa, but in doing so becomes the epitome of rootlessness. The ironic connection goes, Singapore’s migrant people are symbolically the progeny are the Eunuch Admiral.

Chen, however, has chosen to heighten other aspects of the piece. Where perhaps other interpreters have approached it with a solemn mien, the impish contrarian figuratively grabs it by the balls and emphasises all talk of castration by way of Freud.

Forget elegance, the experience here is visceral — whether it’s the wince-inducing, continuous heavy loud thud of a punching bag released from a height during a description of castration or a cameo of a huge inflatable bird when you least expect it.

For a play that’s more compiled fragments of musings, recollections and stories — and with a handful of dream sequences thrown in — Chen’s disjointed, surrealist (and Dadaist) approach makes perfect sense. Visual puns, non sequiturs, deadpan interpretive gestures, and a general skewed and irreverent sense of humour are found all over this Eunuch Admiral.

But for all its technicolour playfulness and seeming ADD shifts, Chen’s take actually amplifies the play’s strength as a piece of text (that’s translated as a performance). There’s a clear divide here. The performers (Koh Wan Ching, Jean Ng, Timothy Nga, Nora Samosir and Najib Soiman) do not deliver any lines (barring some cartoonish sound effects here and there) and so focus on creating tight, snappy choreographed scenes or tableaus.

Meanwhile, Kuo’s text is pre-recorded and brought to life by a who’s who of theatre talents, beginning, fittingly enough, with the esteemed T Sasitharan (who, incidentally succeeded Kuo as The Substation’s artistic director). It’s an impressive lineup that partakes in a collective, evocative literary reading (that could very well be a definitive recorded version).

In this separation between the body and ghostly voice, the piece’s notions of incompleteness and fragmentation becomes clear — even as we enjoy this delightfully bewildering voyage, encountering sights so eccentric they would probably have Zheng He himself scratching his head.

Decendants Of The Eunuch Admiral runs until May 3 at the Esplanade Theatre Studios. Tickets at S$30 from SISTIC. For more information on other events, visit http://www.thestudios.com.sg/