Macbeth @ Esplanade Studios, Singapore, 2016 Reviewed by Kevin Riordan The banquet scene closes with one of the most striking images in Full Show Lane Studio’s Macbeth. Banquo’s ghost, in partial drag, pushes Macbeth in a wheelchair, almost caringly. The chair has become a moving throne that bears the regent’s now-exhausted body. As they wheel […]
Ma’Ma Yong (About Nothing Much to Do) @ Esplanade Theatre Studio, Singapore, 22-24 October 2015 Reviewed by Kevin Riordan After an opening dance number, one of the musicians sings something of a curtain speech. The five-man band is prominent throughout this show, seated center-stage in a slightly recessed pit. The program indicates that these musicians—who […]
Reviewed by Kevin Riordan (Nanyang Technological University) At the moment it’s hard for a show in Singapore to not be somehow about Singapore. The nation’s fiftieth birthday—branded “SG50”—approaches this August and theater companies have joined, both wittingly and unwittingly, in this moment of national reflection: The Esplanade (the performing arts center whose exterior alludes to […]