Dive

by Laura Hayes
WILD RICE
Studio @ WILD RICE, Singapore

This is not a play about swimming, despite what the poster and title may suggest. But then again, maybe it is. Written by Laura Hayes and directed by Sim Yan Ying (YY), Dive is a tough, unflinching work about two individuals navigating a relationship - sinking, swirling and desperately trying to surface for air. 

A man and a woman meet at a swimming pool. Both are teenagers - he's in the army and she's a student practising her diving routine. The waters sparkle and the sparks fly. Thus begins a decades-long relationship filled with heartbreak and abuse, one that continues through their high-powered careers as a doctor and lawyer respectively. Through a series of episodes, in both public and private spaces, we see the woman being belittled and gaslit by the man. Something is definitely not right but she's made to feel like she's always in the wrong. The violence is rarely physical but no less excruciating to watch. A particularly harrowing scene involves the woman being abandoned by the man at a restaurant for ordering the wrong wine, quietly shovelling food down her throat. 

Hayes' central conceit is to portray the couple using two pairs of actors. The tight, talented ensemble of Ebi Shankara, Jean Ng, Irsyad Dawood and Ellison Tan take turns to play the man and woman, swapping partners over and over again. The characters announce their ages at the start of each scene to mark who is the abuser and who is the abused. Sometimes an actor narrates a scene from the perspective of one of the characters while another acts it out, giving us a glimpse into their internal and external selves. The multiplicity takes time to get used to but the point is clear - this couple could be anyone, anywhere, regardless of age, race or gender. The bruising, crystalline prose bounces off the page. 

Photo Credit: WILD RICE

YY has always been a director who embraces messiness and discomfort in her work, sensitively tackling themes like racism, grief and ageing. Here, she once again proves to be master of the material, corralling the quartet into a performative language that is both visceral and poetic. She infuses the text with the fluidity of contemporary dance and as we are sat on both sides of WILD RICE's intimate Studio space, there is a sense of watching a tennis match as the barbs go back and forth, relentlessly, between the two players.  

The production design is simple but sleek. Elizabeth Mak's white tiles and blue reflective surfaces cleverly allude to the swimming theme and mirroring of relationships. NONFORM's multimedia projections and Guo Ningru's sound designs amplify confrontational moments, capturing the slow splintering of the relationship. And the blue tops in varying shades that YY (as costume designer) puts her actors in give the production a cohesive visual texture. 

I did feel that the play somewhat outstays its welcome  towards the end, particularly in the scenes that follow a life-changing decision by one of the characters. And while this may not have been intentional, there is also a degree of ambiguity to the denouement that leaves one wondering if there are meant to be two different versions of what actually happened. Nonetheless, this is engrossing, essential theatre about the darkness that may lurk in a relationship and the importance of learning when to say no to abuse.

 

The Crystalwords score: 3.5/5