There is an old saying that “blood is thicker than water”. In the double bill directed by Adrian Tan, Just Late brings us up-close and personal to look at the lives of its central characters.

Just Late (by playwright Dora Tan)

UrbanWire reviews Just Late, part of Blood Binds: A Doublebill, one of the OCBC’s fare of performances in the recent Singapore Theatre Festival 2008.

Entering the Black Box at the National Library Drama Centre, a cold gust of air-con embraces you while the dimness envelopes you. You find yourself drawn into an unfamiliar living room, it’s like actually walking into the life and the living room of an unacquainted, yet familiar stranger. That’s what the entrance ticket that you clutch in your hand empowers you with, the opportunity to step into the lives of others.

This is drama after all.

As you attempt to find a seat, you are suddenly aware of a silent character in the confines of his home, sitting silently on the couch. You move along the banisters, feeling slightly uncomfortable and attempting to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Then, the lone figure moves, oblivious to your gaze and absently shifts the cushions around, then continues on to arrange and rearrange the candles, cake and packets of drinks on the table.

In the intimate setting of the Black Box, your initial uneasiness of watching the lonely blind man begins to seep away when you gain control of fact that you are but just one of the other silent (or not so) observers of ‘life’. Then we wonder, why is the man is supposed to be celebrating his big 70th birthday left all alone and cancelled on by his own children?

The palpable loneliness depicted by the central character, Patrick (played by Jerry Hoh), in the opening scene then shifts somewhat into comic relief gear when two young robbers, played by Daphne Ong and Chris Lee enters the scene. On realising that Patrick had mistaken them for his two grandchildren “Alex” and “Angel”, the unscrupulous but not completely incorrigible pair are emboldened as Patrick begins to unravel his story.

As you observe “Alex” and “Angel”, perhaps you might identify with “Alex”, whose timorous-passive character is inherently more softhearted, or his girlfriend “Angel”, whose character hinges on practicality, indifference as well as a hardened exterior from her prostitution background.

One way of looking at these two characters is that they reflect a disregard that younger people have towards the elderly while leading their hurried and often more-complicated-than-necessary lives.

At one point, we are plunged into darkness with the trio when a blackout strikes unexpectedly. So while the hands of an illuminated clock against the background of Patrick’s living room swings by nonchalantly, you get a sense of the passage of time passing eerily in the candle-lit dimness. It is also at this point that we see a role-reversal among the three characters. “Alex” and “Angel” find that they are rendered helpless in maneuvering in the dark while Patrick, being blind, was yet able to ‘see’. 

Of Regrets and Isolation

It’s in Patrick’s telling of his past and family that we begin to see the allegory of regrets and isolation from this drama surfacing.

At 69-going-70, a man at Patrick’s age should be enjoying what some would term the ‘circle of life’, or as the Chinese would say, ‘a hall full of children and grandchildren’. But the old man, not unlike many others in our society, isn’t spared from the pains of regrets and his lamentations of strained familial relationships.

How true, that often enough, it seems much easier to show compassion and find yourself more receptive of a stranger’s stories and his past.

Now let’s tweak the equation.

Are we just as receptive or forgiving with our own parents for the wrongs and choices that they made in the past?

Dora Tan, playwright for this play, wrote in her message to the audience that she “wanted to tell their (the elderly’s) from the other side – that sometimes the elderly are ‘abandoned’ by their families because of what they had done or failed to do.”

One parallel that can be drawn from the play was when “Angel” grudgingly softens her character to accept Patrick and eventually changes her mind about robbing him. But when confronted with a true accusation of being 3 months pregnant, she is less forgiving in her treatment of the subject on how her parents have done “nothing” for her, leading her to where she is today.

The Tempest

Just Late takes an ominous turn for the climax when Patrick, after 4 hours (not real-time) of waiting, makes a silent decision to climb out of his flat during the storm.

For those familiar with Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, the writer feels that there is an allusion here to the scene of the tempestuous night where the aggrieved King Lear stands out in the storm embittered by the way he has been treated and at the same time realising that he too has done wrong in the past.

While Patrick perches precariously with the reckless yet unselfish “Alex” clinging to his leg, there is a pregnant suspense and you can’t help but to hold your breath while you wait and listen to Patrick’s soliloquy while “Angel” drops the steely façade of her character and frets for the pair to return to the safety of the house. All the time you wonder, is this the swan song of the old man?

The play’s climax then transits into an emotionally-charged moment when the rain-soaked pair finally stumbles back into the house. Patrick eventually breaks down in his living room. The simple confessional, depicting the fatherly sacrifices for his children, such as working harder just to be able to buy uniform and school shoes for his children when they were younger; making the difficult and unpopular decision to sell the house so that his son could become a brain surgeon, brought many in the audience to tears.

Kudos, and a special mention here on UrbanWire, goes to Jerry Hoh whose convincing and heart-rending performance in Just Late marks his return to stage after his foray into international productions.

 

Blood Binds was presented by W!LD RICE in collboration with Magdalena (Singapore) & The Substation.

(Photos credit: Tea Yem Chiang)