Friday evening found me in the audience at luna_id's staging of a Harold Pinter doublebill. Namely, The Lover and The Dumb Waiter. I was expecting a more engaging performance. But even without the annoying Caucasians behind us who kept whispering the obvious (What are they doing? -- They're roleplaying -- Ohhhhh, roleplaying (titter) ) the whole thing was a bit of a letdown. Technically it was excellent. I liked the innovative set design, heavy on wooden grilles for some nifty lighting effects. Heavyweights Tan Kheng Hua, Lim Yu Beng (they're a real-life married couple btw) and Gerald Chew provided competent acting, as expected.

Unfortunately, the performances were kind of flat with The Dumb Waiter lacking more. Any effect on the audience came not from the delivery but from Pinter's writing. If you had known what a Pinteresque silence was and were looking for those that evening, you would have only found the ubiquitous poor cousins -- your run-of-the-mill pauses and silences that mostly indicate time passing. The British accents felt forced as well.

I believe Justin has more to say about this and with far more eloquence. For him, the performance was indicative of the state of Singapore society and theatre. After listening to him, and talking to Amanda on Sunday, I've come to a much better understanding of the relationship between a society and its drama, with the various consequences that particular relationship implies. Sounds vague, I suppose, but if I had it all worked out already I would be a far better person than I am right now.
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Spent my Sunday afternoon rummaging through CDs at Zouk's Flea n Easy. This is a monthly flea market held inside the well-known club, and thus attracts a certain sort of seller and buyer. Lots of clubwear and street fashion stuff (mostly for women I might add), CDs, movie videotapes, magazines. I was pleased to find Fantastic Plastic Machine stuff, and I'm still a little sore at missing out on a promo t-shirt for a Blur album. Michelle and her friend joined me, but the place was swelled to almost full capacity (TIP: Go early!!!) and we were looking for completely different things so not much chance to interact.

Best of all, watched the excellent Good Bye Lenin! in the evening. More on that later.