OzAsia<\/p>\n
Accommodating force of history<\/p>\n
Hotel (Parts I and II)
\nby Alfian Sa\u2019at & Marcia Vanderstraaten
\nWild Rice
\nDunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
\nSeptember 28-29. Duration: Part I – Two hours 40 minutes,
\nPart II – One hour 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
It is not every day you get a chance to spend two nights in a grand hotel, and this centrepiece theatre listing in the 2017 OzAsia program lives up to its five star ratings. From Singapore\u2019s inventive Wild Rice company, Hotel (Parts I and II)<\/em> is not only theatrically bold and entertaining, it has sharply polemic and often culturally outspoken themes which were exhilarating to Singaporeans and are insightful and sometimes confronting for Australian audiences.<\/p>\n Commissioned in 2015 for the 50th<\/sup> year anniversary of Singapore\u2019s independence, Hotel <\/em>was enthusiastically received in its premiere season and is playing internationally for the first time. In a location closely resembling the famous Raffles Hotel, Wild Rice directors Ivan Heng and Glen Goei, with an excellent ensemble of fourteen actors, present eleven separate plays each set a decade apart from 1915 to 2015.<\/p>\n The stories are strongly drawn and take unexpected turns. In 1915, a pompous English plantation manager interrupts his young wife\u2019s honeymoon plans by insisting she attend a public execution. The ignorant racist presumption of the Europeans is shocking to witness.<\/p>\n In 1925, two cousins – one a laundry worker, the other a ladies maid – unexpectedly meet and secretly dress up in Madam\u2019s expensive clothes. A comic farce shifts disturbingly when we discover the young maid is being held in virtual slavery.<\/p>\n Hotel<\/em> constantly challenges and changes perspectives of race and gender, sexual preference, national and ethnic identity, and the chasm between privilege and servitude.<\/p>\n Part II, beginning in 1975, charts new social issues such as gender re-assignment and old difficulties like inter-racial marriage and generational conflict. As in the works of Robert Lepage, some later stories link with previous events – such as the Japanese Occupation and 9\/11.<\/p>\n Stylishly directed by Heng and Goei, the production uses the choreography and fluidity of a musical, as cast members, dressed as bellboys and maids, re-set designer Wong Chee Wai\u2019s adaptable hotel room with new d\u00e9cor for each unfolding facet of Singapore\u2019s complex history.<\/p>\n Artful back-projections from multimedia designer Brian Gothong Tan not only paper the hotel walls but illustrate the action with news clippings and archival photography. The lighting by Lim Woan Wen is a technicolour feast and adds further vibrancy to this delectable production. The filmic music and sound design, by Paul Searles and The Gunnery, propels the action; pop songs reflect changing times, and English hymns and anthems are used to discomforting satiric effect.<\/p>\n This is a rich event, impressively written and presented. Concluding with a strangely compelling death bed scene (brilliantly performed by Ivan Heng and the versatile Pam Oei) Hotel<\/em> does not let up until checkout time.<\/p>\n OzAsia runs until October 8. OzAsia Accommodating force of history Hotel (Parts I and II) by Alfian Sa\u2019at & Marcia Vanderstraaten Wild Rice Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre September 28-29. Duration: Part I – Two hours 40 minutes, Part II – One hour 40 minutes. It is not every day you get a chance to spend two nights in a grand hotel, and this centrepiece theatre listing in the 2017 OzAsia program lives up to its five star ratings. From Singapore\u2019s inventive Wild Rice company, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,5,19,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-37","category-archive","category-international","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2795,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions\/2795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBookings 131 246. ozasiafestival.com.au<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"