i watched Lovepuke, a play by Theatreworks, Education and Outreach, on Sunday.
It was the latest local production in a growing line of local productions i have been catching recently for the express purpose of keeping up to date with current trends in the local theatre scene.
The cast was stellar. Most of them anyway. And overall the production was of a standard that i’ve come to expect from local productions. i particularly liked the pre-show use of a mock radio programme, a pseudo-Love Songs a la Class 95, played over the sound system and the simple but innovative set design, consisting of two platforms seemingly supported by toilet paper rolls and eight toilet bowls (remember the title of the play?).
It’s primarily a comedy, if somewhat darker in nature than your usual comedy, which meant that comic timing was key. For the most part, it was spot on, with Chua Enlai, Janice Koh, Brandon Fernandez and Denise Tan in particular standing out.
Watching the play, i couldn’t help but wistfully hope that someday the Christian worldview in the arts could be expressed with such quality, finesse and imagination. It reflects poorly on Yahweh, the Creator of all the heavens and the earth, when what passes for Christian efforts in the arts is, at best, sincere but so very often trite, poor quality and, at worst, condescending and banal.
Lovepuke is a post-modern take on the notion of love and relationships. Its ideas are communicated through the foibles of four couples, albeit in a non-narrative fashion as is to be expected of a post-modern script. The practice of premarital sex is accepted as an inseparable component of relationships, even in the most innocent and successful relationship out of the four. The playwright’s perspective on love and relationships can be neatly summed up by a line from the play which basically says that once we learn not to expect so much from relationships, then relationships will not be as difficult to deal with or as messy as they always seem to be.
i grieved when this line was spoken.
i can’t say i was too surprised by the playwright’s view. The title of the play gives quite a lot away. What i found ironic was that the audience largely assented with the worldview presented in the play, though most of the audience consisted of couples. i laughed too, as i am sure the audience did at the comic moments but i fear many laughed because of their familiarity and wry agreement with the situations and thoughts presented in the course of the play.
This lowering of expectations of much what is integral and important in life is a feature of the post-modern world. Sadly so. Life sucks, shit happens and we make what best we can of it, right? If my experience of relationships is as crappy and disappointing as it has always been, then surely this the best that any person can hope for, right?
Wrong.
So wrong.
Especially when we measure it against the high notions of love and relationships, romantic or otherwise, presented in the Bible and most perfectly represented in the trinitarian nature of God.
i guess i was saddened not by the audience’s ignorance of the Christian worldview of love and relationships – which is the prerogative of the Church to proclaim and solely our responsibility if the world remains ignorant about it – but by their gleeful acceptance and accordance with such debased and, to be honest, horrifying notions of love and relatonships.
i shuddered to think of what would transpire within the relationships of the couples in the audience as soon as the play ended.
Would the situations in the play be replicated in their relationships?
Would they come to expect less from their partners, their relationships, and, ultimately, love?
Would they be surprised that it’s not as comic in real life as it seemed to be in the play?
Would they laugh once more if they watched Lovepuke again?
