Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (8th – 12th Feb)


The highly acclaimed production of Frank McGuinness’ masterpiece by The Actors Studio Malaysia is back!

After a hugely successful opening in Kuala Lumpur Jan 2011 where it played to full houses night after night and received rave reviews, this 2012 The Actors Studio is re-staging this wonderful production.

The play deals with three men, an Englishman, an Irishman and an American who are taken hostage and held in a filthy, windowless cell in Beirut.  They are unsure of what the future holds for them. Will they see the light of day again? Will they see their families again? These are questions they do not have the answer for.

As they fight to survive and stay sane, they escape into their fantasy worlds by shooting films or reliving Wimbledon, they provoke and taunt each other, they comfort each other and simply hang on…

This production by The Actors Studio is directed by Joe Hasham and features a stellar cast comprising British actor Charles Donnelly, Australian actor Kingsley Judd and Malaysian actor Gavin Yap. Donnelly and Judd will be reprising their roles from the hugely successfully Scottish and Australian productions, respectively.

“Bottom line, watch it. This is an expertly-directed and well-played production… Highly recommended” Brenda James, The Star (Malaysia)

Presenter: The Actors Studio

Genre: Stage Play

Kuala Lumpur

Date & Time: 8  Feb 2012 (Opening Night) – 11 Feb 2012 @ 8:30pm /12 Feb 2012 @ 3pm

Venue: The Actors Studio @ Lot 10

Ticket Prices: RM 48 (Adults) RM28 (Student, Disabled, TAS Card, UNHCR Card)

Ticket Promotion: 20% Discount for Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me and The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr in a single receipt.

Penang

Date & Time: 16 Feb 2012 – 18 Feb 2012 @ 8:30pm19 Feb 2012 @ 3pm

Venue: stage 2, penangpac
Level 3A, Quay 1, Straits Quay, Jalan Seri Tanjung Pinang
Tanjung Tokong, 10470 Pulau Pinang.

Ticket Price: RM48 / RM28 (Student, Disabled, TAS Card, UNHCR Card)

Director: Joe Hasham OAM

Executive Producer: Dato’ Faridah Merican

Featuring: Charles Donnelly, Kingsley Judd & Gavin Yap

Written by: Frank McGuinness

REVIEWS

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 from http://britangelot.blogspot.com/2011/01/someone-wholl-watch-over-me.html

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me

On a fine Tuesday afternoon, I was reading the papers as usual, and when I came across the review of Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me in The Star (Jan 11, 2011), I knew I have to watch it. Even if it means defying all social stigma, I was willing to go and watch it, ALONE! Yes, my desires were that strong, cause I really really wanted to go.
Why were my desires so strong?
After reading the awesome review, I told myself, “hey, this could be worth money.. I should give it a try!”. And from that enthusiasm grew a strong desire and need to go for Frank McGuinness’s Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. When was the last time I went to a play? Or a musical? Or anything performing arts-related? A really, really long time ago. School productions are needless to say, not part of the count. I think my last actual theatre production was… Avenue Q, Singapore, late 2008. Boy, that was a long time ago!
Anyhow, this play was directed by Joe Hasham, the theatre stalwart. This Actors Studio production is directed and produced by the husband-wife duo; Hasham and Dato’ Faridah Merican respectively. They are the godparents of Malaysian theatre. And it is well-known that Joe Hasham’s plays are deep and thought-provoking. And I love deep and thought-provoking.
I couldn’t help it but to feel instant mundaneness in my life at almost every second. I do wanna enjoy life, get out more often. Living the fast lane… but, hmm, I don’t know how to put them in delicate words, so I shan’t mention it. Hence, when an opportunity as such slides in, how can I say no? Like, it seems like an interesting play (read the review), and I love the theatre! I cannot skip this opportunity for some good ol’ appreciation of The Arts. I simply cannot.
Finding the right people to go.
Just like before asking someone out for a date, you would scout for similar interests, and chemistry connections. That way, you would most likely not risk a potential disaster date, am I not correct?! Well same applies to my theory of asking-someone-to-accompany-me-to-the-play. I do not want to simply select someone to go with me. I do not want the potential someone to be disappointed, if he/she is not into theatres and such. And I certainly do not want to set an expectation bar for a newbie, and have it lowered if the play is a flop or something. So many risks!
I may be fussy, but I believe that whatever I do, wherever is it I go, I need to be with someone I can ‘connect’ with. Even if it’s just friends, best buds etc. Not necessarily only romantic pursuits. Of course, I’d love to meet new people, enhance my social circle, but when it comes to serious things (yes, I consider play productions to be serious matters), I have certain circumstances.
But, I’m not saying that I’m choosy with selecting friends and all. I’m flexible! You treat me nice, I’ll treat you nice lah. Win-win situation.
But heck, it wasn’t easy. Looking for someone to go with me. Some just plainly did not fucking respond. I don’t fucking care anymore. Some bailed out. Some couldn’t make it, but oh well. I let you off my radar if you respond, so thank you to those who did! *hint hint more sarcastic bitch-lashing to come* Okay, I mean that with a tinge of humour, I wanna be less bitter this year. Muahaha.
I went through lengths to get someone to go with me. It was just exhausting. But finally, finally! Someone is actually interested! I was so delighted at that moment. Like, yayyyyy! *runs around in circles*
How did it go?
The play was top-notch. I went with an awesome friend who had no experience with performing arts. But even so, both of us agreed that it was splendid in many levels. The acting was stellar, albeit only with only three cast members; an American, an Irishman, and an Englishman, and props that consist of a single lightbulb, bottles of water, thin and barely-there mattresses, the Quran and Bible, and… that’s about it.

The witty remarks of Edward (Kingsley Judd), the Irish journalist, was at times, hard to comprehend because of his thick accent, but I love his humour and sarcasm. Michael (Charles Donnelly), the English university professor was really a sanctimonious prig, to his own claim. Adam (Gavin Yap), the American doctor was always exercising, keeping up with his routine. The three innocent men, of different nationalities and backgrounds, trying hard to keep each other sane. Although they threw cruel remarks at each other, but I really felt their need to remain human and go through their days. How would you feel one fine day, to be caught and held hostage, and never know when your time is? How does it feel to be stuck in a windowless cell, oblivious to the outside world? To have someone listening you, so you’d have to fake laughs in order to show the guards that you’re okay? It’s not easy. It mustn’t be.

There were a lot of humour going on, Irish jokes like how they are the ones that invented foreplay, and that foreplay is alcohol. I love Judd’s portrayal of Edward. From an audience’s point of view, it’s as though they’ve lost their sanity, stuck in their bubble for too long, with the reenactment of Virginia Wade’s Wimbledon match, to singing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang whilst imagining to be in a flying car.

But some scenes really moved my heart away with full-blown emotions. One of it was watching Adam singing ‘Amazing Grace’, and the other two thanking him cause they really needed to hear those verses from the song. They ‘wrote’ letters, verbally, to their loved ones back home. Just an assurance that everything’s alright. Their extraordinary performance was so immense, with Ella Fitzgerald’s Someone To Watch Over Me playing at the end of every scene was hauntingly beautiful. I shed a few tears towards the ending. You can really feel what these men went through. It is after all based on a true story.

So overall, I enjoyed my Sunday thoroughly. Not only the play itself, but also the rest of the day in summary. I went through lengths, high and lows, to go to this. And I did. And it was worth every penny, every blood, sweat and tears involved. Now, I feel like going for all of the KLPac events. Feel like attending more theatre productions. Make full use of my student privileges. Ke ke ke.

People should really start appreciating The Arts, and also understanding what’s theatre. Do not be surprised, some may still question as to what a ‘play’ is. The trend of The Arts is growing among the young Malaysians, and I hope the people are more open to performing arts. Watching these actors perform on stage with their full might, I gotta take my hat off to them. Just plain stellar.

Ratings?
9/10. I would come back to Actors Studio for more. It’s better to spend my moolah on substantial talent and solid performances, rather than on clothes or accessories, no matter how pretty or a steal they may be.

Some say I’m an old lady at heart. “Kids our age go for movies, not to the theatre!” Well I’m defying all social norms! If it pleases me, I shall head to the theatre and watch a play. Do not diss my preference on what’s fun to me. I am not amused with the usual teenage routines. HAHAHHAHA. That was just a Queen Victoria reference. I do the usual teen things too, of course. :)

PS. Need I re-emphasize on how much I loved the play? Well, I just want to. I LOVE IT.
PPS. Oh yeah, I saw both Joe Hasham and Faridah Merican that day. And and and… Harith Iskandar and Mano Maniam! Veterans all these! *fangirl mode*
Posted by Angelyn at 12:06 AM

Laughter in despair

By BRENDA JAMES
entertainment@thestar.com.my

Three men, three nationalities, one cell.

Hostage is a crucifying aloneness. It is a silent, screaming slide into the bowels of ultimate despair. Hostage is a man hanging by his fingernails over the edge of chaos, feeling his fingers slowly straightening. Hostage is the humiliating stripping away of every sense and fibre of body and mind and spirit that make us what we are. Hostage is a mutant creation filled with fear, self-loathing, guilt and death-wishing. But he is a man, a rare, unique and beautiful creation of which these things are no part. – Brian Keenan, An Evil Cradling

WHAT happens when three innocent men are chained to the floor in the filthy, dark depths of a prison in Lebanon? Directed by Joe Hasham and staged in a dreary setting that unwittingly draws the audience into the squalid surroundings and mental anguish that these three men had to endure, this is what Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me tries to answer. In the black, bare space of the set designed by Martanoemi Noriega and lit by Lim Ang Swee the only props are a single lightbulb, bottles of water placed next to grimy mattress, the Bible and the Quran. Minimal, but under Hasham’s guiding hands they kept the audience absorbed for the next two hours.

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me deals with three men – an Englishman, an Irishman and an American – who are taken hostage and held in Beirut. They are detained in a windowless cell with zero contact with the outside world and face a future where death could come at any time.

Cellmates: (From left) Gavin Yap, Kingsley Judd and Charles Donnelly in Frank McGuinness’ evocative Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me.

Based on a true account by Irish writer Brian Keenan in his book An Evil Cradling, the play explores the lives of these men who are held for political leverage, but in it stays clear of making this production a political statement. Rather, it is about identification of self, the triumph of the human spirit, about morality; it makes us more aware of the feelings of the hostages as they come to terms with the brutal reality of what they are facing.

Through Frank McGuinness’ screenplay, much of the horror is taken away by a sense of surrealism that the captives conjure up in the minds – the only way they are able to survive their hellish reality. While McGuinness carefully takes time to flesh out each character, Hasham successfully guided the actors in bringing their memories, biasness and regrets to the surface. The end result is a series of intense and captivating scenes.

The necessary mundanity of the set-up is exceeded by the energy the performers brought to the stage. On the acting front, there were no weak links. The actors are excellent as they vividly portray a mind slowly and steadily cracking over time and the despair that comes from hope slipping away.

Gavin Yap is admirable in his portrayal of Adam, the gentle and intelligent American doctor who religiously keeps to his exercise routine, while Kingsley Judd brilliantly plays the mordant and sarcastic Edward, the Irish journalist. Their kinship – reminiscent of a pendulum and swings between witty repartee to almost desperate attempts to raise each other’s flagging spirits – is broken by the sudden arrival of Michael, a professor of Middle English who is by his own admission is a “sanctimonious prig”, sensitively and consummately portrayed by Charles Donnelly. This forced “living arrangement” further creates a means to survive and the friendship becomes a weapon against their own vulnerabilities.

Yap, Judd and Donnelly take these different personalities and backgrounds and deliver their human imperfections with heart-breaking honesty. They are sometimes cruel to each other but it is a necessity. Their sense of terror and claustrophobia are heightened by the knowledge that the guards are listening in on all their conversations and laughter becomes the default expression as opposed to tears.

This ominous undertone reverberates with the melody of the call to prayer at the opening of each scene and the haunting vocals of Ella Fitgerald singing Someone To Watch Over Me at the end of each scene – sometimes they overlap leaving one feeling both confused and anxious – but that could have been yet another attempt at keeping the audience drawn into the reality of the play.

A veritable roller coaster ride, verbal wit is seamlessly combined with almost slapstick comedy and your heart will go out to the characters as they conjure up rich and elaborate scenarios which, for a spilt second in time, places them in an alternate reality. While the situations and events depicted via narrative were some of the most grim and harrowing that anybody could find themselves in, it was countered with burst of humour some even bordering on vaudeville but laugh you will.

From an observer’s standpoint, the childish competition among the captives is emotionally draining and yet you want them to shield themselves with this gloriously imaginative and unfettered humour. The slow onslaught of insanity (at times it does seem to drag on) is kept at arm’s lengths as these men imagine movies that they would direct or verbally “write” letters to their loved ones (and try to keep up a brave front for those at home).

At other times, Edward plays bartender and mixes-up heady batches of martinis before they fly off in their car to the tunes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. A favourite scene was when Michael enacts Virginia Wade’s Wimbledon victory in 1977 with Edward cheekily standing in as Queen Elizabeth; their laughter was infectious and one couldn’t help but wish they would keep on laughing in the imaginary bubble.

Bottom line, watch it. This is an expertly-directed and well-played production and one hopes indicative of the quality of offerings for the year ahead.

Highly recommended.

Life: Triumph of the human spirit

arefomar@nst.com.my
2011/01/03

Laugh, cry and wonder about life in captivity. AREF OMAR finds out more from director Joe Hasham and the cast of Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me.
IN the song, Roll The Bones, by rocking Canadian power trio Rush, singer Geddy Lee sings: “Why are we here? Because we’re here. Why does it happen? Because it happens.” Philosophical musings on chance, luck, causality, existence, fate and the seeming randomness of life aren’t anything new.
But when you’re shackled and confined in a grimy claustrophobic cell on foreign soil, for reasons unknown to you, the gravity of the whys would carry a heart wrenching weight on your shoulders.
This uphill climb to make sense of an uncontrollable situation, coupled with a mental fight for sanity and survival in close proximity are portrayed onstage in The Actors Studio (TAS) latest production, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. It concerns three abducted men — an English academic, an Irish journalist and an American doctor — who are held hostage in a windowless cell in Beirut.
Faced with an uncertain future, the trio band together to pull through, overcoming their initial differences. “There’s no politics in the play, it’s really about relationships and humanity,” says TAS co-founder and artistic director Joe Hasham who helms the play.
He explains that the resilience of the human spirit takes centre stage, while eschewing the graphic violence that usually accompanies these themes. Like the three unlikely characters who are thrown together into a boiling soup of looming dread, the actors — Australian Kingsley Judd, Englishman Charles Donnelly and local thespian Gavin Yap — have to depend on each other to carry off the challenging play.
“A lot of the dialogue is quick with broken sentences, so trust is needed for fellow actors to come in on the right cues or the whole thing will fall apart,” says Judd.
“Everyone breaks down at some point and to do that with two persons you don’t know, you just got to trust them,” adds Donnelly.
The two are reprising their roles in this 100-minute play, with Judd fresh from a recent Australian production and Donnelly, who was in the Scottish production 10 years ago. Although the idea to stage the play was mooted in 1994, finding the right actors, funding and the unfortunate flooding of the old TAS venue in Dataran Merdeka kept the play in lockup up till now, says Hasham.
“It’s always great to work with new people, to see how they work and I’m grateful for this opportunity,” says Yap, adding that as an actor, this is a dream role for him. All three actors agree that the words carry so much as a beautiful piece of writing.
“The script actually does all the work, it’s very clear, and there are lots of things an actor can fill in himself but it’s adding to what’s already there,” says Yap.
Hasham says the audience will see the progression as well as regression of the three distinct characters during the play. Yap plays Adam, the American with a can-do spirit and, although the youngest and least experienced, is kind of like the father figure.
Judd’s Irish character Edward is the most colourful, yet he also has a lot of burden to unload and takes it out on everyone.
And unlike the other two who are streetwise, the Englishman Michael, played by Donnelly, is like a babe lost in the woods.
Despite the intense gamut of emotions that the actors go through, the play offers some funny moments too.
Conversations spiral from casual chatter to arguments on various degrees of topics, with flightier ones including tennis matches, appointments with the Queen of England and animated driving lessons.
“It’s a tedious situation and they do all sorts of things to relieve the boredom because they can’t escape physically but mentally they help each other to escape and save each other’s souls,” says Judd.
Yap explains that the random aspect of the hostage crisis situation is what makes the characters feel so impotent when faced with the whys of the things happening to them.
“They just don’t know, there’s no ransom and they can’t communicate with their captors,” he says.
“Ridiculous, that’s the only way to explain the situation,” he adds.
So, in a theoretically ridiculous setting, who would he choose to be locked up with? “Jim Morrison and Antonin Artaud or Salma Hayek and Susan Sarandon, perhaps, my girlfriend and her mum,” muses Yap with a laugh, before admitting that he really wouldn’t want to spend time in a cell with anyone for an extended period of time.
Who would? Written by celebrated Irish playwright and poet, Frank McGuinness, the play was inspired by Brian Keenan’s abduction in 1986.
Taken while on his way to work at the American University of Beirut, Keenan was held in solitary confinement for two months.
The Irishman was later moved to another cell where he befriended British journalist John McCarthy. More than four years went by before he was finally released.
His autobiographical book about the ordeal, entitled An Evil Cradling, won Keenan the Irish Times Literary Prize for
Non-fiction in 1991. After premiering at London’s Hampstead Theatre in 1992 to rave reviews, the Broadway production of the play, which starred Stephen Rea, ran for five years and garnered two Tony Award nominations for the Best Play and Best Actor categories.
“It’s about perspective, to be optimistic despite the gruesome aspects, and hopefully it’ll touch the audience, move them to be kinder to each other, their pets, whatever,” says Hasham of the play which will travel to Singapore for performances (Jan 27-30) at The Arts House after its local run.
There are also plans to stage it in Penang, closer to the end of the year, when TAS’ new Performing Arts Centre of Penang opens.
“We want to be truthful doing this, to remain truthful to the real people that this situation actually happened to 20 years ago and its relevance today, where this kind of situation still occurs,” says Judd.
In the play, one of the characters expresses poignantly: “In dreams I’m a free man, I’d like to see that dream come true.” Go watch Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me to find out.

Venue: Level 3A, Quay 1, Straits Quay, Jalan Seri Tanjung PinangTanjung Tokong, 10470 Pulau Pinang.

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