Review: Dear Dive (Dive, written by Laura Hayes, directed by Sim Yan Ying “YY”)
Dear DIVE,
I woke up — gasping, no. Drowning. From the water pressure that crushed me at thousands of feet (no, not feet. Meters.) beneath the water of the pool that we sat in.
Of course, I wasn’t really drowning.
And we — the audience — weren’t really in a pool.
It just felt like it — because of set & lighting designer Elizabeth Mak’s incredible choice to design the ceiling with long rows of blocks that resembled the lanes separating the swimming paths in a swimming pool, which would situate us — the audience — underwater.
As a complex amalgamation of two lives, intertwined like fizzy, electrical currents that buzz and short-circuit whoever or whatever is in contact with it (coincidentally, also a sound effect that pervades the story), you gave me the greatest gift — but also the greatest curse — an audience member could have in watching a play: reflecting the reality of my life back at me.
As I watched the story of love and hurt — for they are, as I have always believed, two sides of the same coin — play out in your re-telling, I more often than not wrote down questions, and question marks, in my notebook than actual “review-worthy” observations.
Because sometimes, in the depths of fatigue, despondence, despair, and hurt from the same person who has been by your side all your life — sometimes, the only thing you can ask is:
why?
Though having only met you once, DIVE, you felt more like family than acquaintance in that short span of time in which you bared your soul to me, and I pray that this letter holds enough weight from my heart to be a fitting tribute, and love-gift, back to you.
Why?
A dive from a height far greater than any I have ever been at (I have self-diagnosed acrophobia) was how you began introducing yourself to us.
And diving into what is later on revealed to be a deeply, twisted, hurtful, and excruciating relationship seems to be a common — perhaps some would say cliché — analogy to depict meeting the person who will spend the next rest of our lives pushing a dagger into our heart and twisting it tighter and tighter, year after year.
But the detail and depth of the descriptions of how every scene begins — every interaction between the older and younger lover — is painstakingly and meticulously indicated; the swimming pool in which they meet for the first time, the mountain upon which they hike, the restaurant they eat in and the subsequent type of wine that triggers the dagger-twister — it reminds us that pain is the strongest memory all of us carry, and the ones tainted with it the easiest to remember.
This intricacy in describing what goes on in both the internal (emotional) and external (physical reality) world extends to the most difficult of scenes, where the younger character describes the sensation of crushing pressure upon the physical body itself:
“My chest tightens
My mouth is sawdust
I try to get up but I can’t move.”
And for a moment — I am there with them.
Movement and text — voice — blend together in an agonising quintiplex throughout the show, where usually it is the young lover who stands center stage, amidst a swirling vortex of multimedia designer NONFORM’s dreamscape-like and fey lights, curving and contorting their body as if trying their best to speak — with movement, not words — of their entire world — their entire psychology, emotion, and world, being ripped to shreds, even as lighting and set designer Mak’s ethereal lights complement the setting of submerged pain that we bear witness to. Sound designer Guo Ningru’s added soundscapes that cause the voices we see/hear to reverbrate — echo — amidst other subtle aural signals remind us we are bearing witness to a pool of drowning — adding to the immersiveness of the experience in the lovers’ individual worlds.
And between each real-life re-telling of cutscenes from the lives of the two lovers, the cast of Irsyad Dawood, Jean Ng, Ebi Shankara, and Ellison Tan flit seamlessly between allowing the pain of the heart to be painted out like a tapestry upon their body — each jerk of the arm, each scrunched-up grimace of the face, each stumble upon the ground — to living out the reality and nitty-gritty details of life as we know it.
Cooking together.
Eating together.
Visiting the parents together.
Because this is how the reality of a relationship that causes us to love and hurt in huge, equal proportions exists.
Not as a constant swirling vortex of pain and anger, humiliation and slavery.
But a deep, throbbing, sub-conscious and only-noticed-when-it-surfaces-from-the-pool kind of pain that coexists besides life — usually behind closed doors.
And so DIVE, you began by pulling us by the hand with a splash — into that dive.
Why?
Dichotomy.
I’ve always liked the artistic symbolism and motif behind the use of repetition, duplicity, and the two-sided nature of coinage — a coin as a symbol.
Because things are always not what they seem, and there is almost always an inevitable opposite to the story that exists somewhere within the original.
The first mirror we see and become aware of as audience are the actors speaking behind a microphone while 2 other actors play out the lives of these two lovers on a stage. The digitally and technologically amplified voices serve as windows — insights — into the inner thoughts and voices, the id of each persona — who lives out their lives in this aggravating, visceral, and painful relationship.
The Eleventh Doctor from the popular sci-fi series Doctor Who once famously said regarding the abilities of the Weeping Angels:
The eyes are not the windows of the soul; they are the doors.
And we as audience members are left to wonder: how long do the lovers spend time gazing into the eyes of their own soul? What does it mean when the microphoned-actor stares into the eyes of the actors, who are oblivious to those voicing their innermost thoughts?
Pain is already viscerally evident from the voice, the movements, the bodies of the lovers, played by actors. The pain is felt and enacted upon us as audience tenfold when made privy to their inner dialogue and immediate thoughts and feelings in response to the anger, repulsion, and the spirit of destruction constantly embodied and released by the older lover through their words, their actions, and the back-and-forth switching that they do between saying “I love you” and “I hate you” to their partner.
The second mirror is that of glass — of reflection.
As audience, we look up towards the ceiling and see the turquoise film used to mimic water staring back down at us — our reflections, our doppelgangers, as if reminding us that the story being played out on stage could happen — might even be happening — to another person in this room, not just the characters onstage before us.
And as the older lover throws a glass “near” the younger lover, the younger recounts it later to her nurse (or doctor) who draws her blood, repeatedly saying that the glass was thrown “near” them — not at.
Language is the means by which we both reach out to others, and how we are perceived, and the emphasis of the “near” not “at” at once reveals to us the duplicitous nature of the younger lover’s diction — how they desperately try to convince themselves that, they didn’t mean it. In these small, seemingly insignificant choices of diction, Hayes’ writing shines.
Glass becomes a motif that not only physically — but emotionally — hurts the lovers, for it is a reminder of the cruelty that exists in this love. (is it even love, at this point?)
The last mirror we see is the mirror of the liar — a purported “mirror” held up by the older lover to the younger, which on the surface seems like the magnifying lens of an investigator, used to clarify and question out of an interest in a discussion — with the younger lover.
But this mirror does not reflect truth — instead, it reflects the damaged, angry, often resentful heart of the older lover towards the younger, though the younger is now too besotted with and attached to the older to see it.
When the younger lover reveals that they have been offered a senior position in a law firm, the older one responds saying,
“I don’t think the extra stress will be good for us.”
Us? It doesn’t sound like an “us” — the way it is said and directed towards the younger lover.
In light of all the previous conflict (conflict? perhaps one-sided violation would be more accurate) harshly afflicted upon the younger lover — it seems like the “us” hides a deeper motive, a deeper desire of the older that their younger partner does not take up the career post.
All this seems to paint the older lover as a villain — a big, bad, scary, evil monster that at all times engages in harsh beatings and berating of their younger lover.
Would that it were so.
The truth is that we see elements of a loving life — a loving relationship, in the day-to-day of the two as well.
As they cook together.
As they go to Ali’s party together.
As they hug each other.
And so the truth is eventually, very gradually, through the onslaught of intimate scenes of both love and hurt that we witness, revealed— that the more painful relationship is not one where constant hurt is inflicted, but where hurt and love are in equal, enormous measures.
Where the hurt is so great — yet the immensity of love compels one to stay as well.
What do you do — when the soul that you love most in the world consumes without end the parts of you that make you, you?
What do you do — when the love of your life burns your wick to keep their flame alight?
Why?
I have compiled a list of love-hurts that both reeled me in — and shredded my heart during the ephemeral revelation of your life to us — on stage.
For as I wrote in the beginning of this epitaph to you, DIVE, sometimes, the pain from a love-hurt relationship can cause us to lose all power of diction and vocabulary. And that includes me.
“If I take a breath, I will cry.”
“I reach for the surface but you
are dragging me down.”
“As long as you’re okay
You’re sure you’re ok?
Should I be worried?”
“You have to say, sometimes,
You have to say no.”
“Yes… I mean, thank you.”
“But not all.”
There are only so many words that you can use to describe pain.
At the end of it all — what are we left with, but the silence of our own company?
The accompaniment of our own pain?
And the deafening realisation that it must be us who has to cut the cord, for the ender of one’s own suffering can only, in effect, be oneself.
“Hold on.”
“I hold you tight.”
Yours with pain and love,
Phil.
Love feels so good… until it doesn’t. But every couple has disagreements, right?
You wonder if this feeling is normal — the walking on eggshells, sharpness, broken glass. Or are you being over-sensitive? And then things are good again, the world disappears and nothing else matters. There is nothing but you and me.
Friends start to ask: ‘Is everything okay?’ And something inside screams at you: ‘This isn’t normal, this isn’t right. Leave, why don’t you just leave?’ But you’ve been together so long. You can’t imagine life apart.
Dive follows one such relationship from giddy adolescence to old age, as love mutates into something unbearable, but is still impossible to let go of.
Inventive, humorous and heartfelt, Dive marked theatre-maker Laura Hayes’ Wild Rice debut, directed by Sim Yan Ying “YY”. Come explore the dark side of love through the prism of one couple, who could be any one of us.
Dive ran from 5–22 September 2024, at The Studio @ Wild Rice. It also marked the beginning of a new development programme by Wild Rice, New & Now, an initiative dedicated to developing new and original writing for the Singapore stage in a structured, sustainable way.
For more information, please view the programme booklet here.
