War play lacks danger

Review: Theatre

RISING SON

Singapore Repertory Theatre

DBS Arts Centre/Last Saturday

Time has smoothed over some of the deepest fractures left by the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. The sort of curdling animosity that might have swallowed this play several decades ago is hardly present today.

But with every retelling of the war comes a certain emotional expectation of what a war ought to be. No one emerges from a war unscathed.

Composer and musician Dick Lee, known for his irresistible musicals, takes a turn for the serious with the stripped-down Rising Son, the first in a family trilogy and based loosely on his father's unusual World War II experiences.

The elder Lee struck up a friendship with a Japanese soldier who moved in next door, resulting eventually in a sort of nostalgia for a period that was, for so many others, a time of great suffering and pain.

At the heart of this very safe, cautious reimagining of one family's wartime past is a fascinating psychological subversion of oppressor and oppressed that could have yielded strange and wonderful fruit.

This curious dynamic, however, is mostly danced around and hinted at; we hardly ever fear for the lives of the well-to-do Sunny Lee (Tan Shou Chen) and his younger sister Ruby (Seong Hui Xuan), who seem to coast through the war unharmed.

The two teenagers encounter Japanese army lawyer Hiroyuki Sato (Caleb Goh) within the confines of a strict story arc that plods from year to year, until the war's inevitable end.

There are attempts to navigate the complexity of Sunny and Ruby's friendship with Sato, but their arguments often revolve around tried-and-tested topics - that he might kill them at any moment, that he should be avoided because he might be dangerous - painting their connection in black and white rather than testing the push and pull of an initially utilitarian relationship creaking under the agony of exposure.

To be revealed as a Japanese sympathiser would have meant immediate and terrible ostracism in the wake of the war, but the very few reservations that Sunny and Ruby have in inviting the invader into their home, or even accepting his food, take a stretch of the imagination to grasp.

Would their parents have been so willing to let their children fraternise with the enemy? Would Ruby, no matter how naive or childish, at least have heard of the horrors that befell female friends and relatives and approached Sato with, perhaps, some hesitation?

Even as the play strives to present an alternate perspective of the war, the looming danger and the horrific realities of battle seem strangely neutered. Like the sheltered Ruby, forced to stay at home, the play itself seems cloistered away from the bloodshed taking place in the rest of the country, trapping its three characters in a purgatorial no-man's land.

Lee resorts to huge expository swathes to propel much of the plot along, meaning that most of the action that occurs is second-hand. Sunny recalls a tense, life-or-death experience in a static monologue that doesn't quite carry the same emotional heft as his actual circumstances. There are whispered threats of rapes and killings, but these discussions remain firmly in the realm of talk and thought, and their threatening outcomes lack a sense of urgency, or danger.

This also means that we do not get more of a sense of each character apart from one or two definable traits - Ruby is reckless and ebullient, Sunny is a stickler for his own set of rules, Sato is polite and tame - and the actors' performances feel visibly choreographed for the most part.

All the same, there is a dogged earnestness to this tale that can be very difficult to fault. Despite some stiff dialogue that lacks the cadence of naturalistic exchange, it is humour that Lee does best, and he manages some well-placed moments of lightness.

There are some truly lyrical and moving scenes, particularly one where Sato attempts to explain a haiku to a puzzled Sunny, juxtaposing their cultural differences but uniting them in appreciation of beauty.

So much of the excruciating pain of war is given a romantic sheen in Rising Son. Even the play's production design evokes a certain gorgeous melancholy, with projections of swirling clouds and shifting squares of amber light.

I think that the stark contrast of beauty in darkness could have struck so much closer to home - if only the encroaching darkness of war had been rougher, fiercer, closing in on the lives at stake, rather than a pretty but muted docility that leaves audiences wanting.

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