The Composer Who Hears Not

One of the more engaging parts of the Spare Room Productions' original play "The Composer" is when composer Wendell (Leslie Tan) is lecturing a class on Beethoven. "Imagine the great composer, unable to hear his own music!" Tan infuses his lines with a depth of conviction that is wonderful for a new actor.

But it seems that no one in the cast or crew could really hear "The Composer" clearly.

The production embraces many firsts, starting with pretty daring"adult" material about a serial adulterer (Tan), and deploys many first-time actors, including cellist (and a quarter of the T'ang Quartet) Tan in the lead role of composer/philanderer Wendell Ang. A somewhat graphic scene involving Wendell and a 19 year old student (played admirably by Lez Ann Chong) also grabbed my attention.

Beneath all that jazz, though, lies a stilted and shallow script that better conjures the tawdry affairs of a daytime soap than a complex world of betrayal and lust.

There were parts where the production tried to be funny, or where it tried to be deep, but all came off as jerky and flat. The feeble insights into the characters felt cliched, and the scenes of seduction, love and tension felt forced. Utterances along the lines of "you never really loved me, did you" do not offer any fresh insights into the human condition or make us care about a character, and should be assiduously avoided by any writer.

The acting performances were understandably varied, with Tan Kheng Hua as the emotional anchor of the play. But even her part - as the wife of Wendell - seemed vastly underwritten. Here, she is a steely, high-strung career diplomat with an unfortunate lack of fertility and the folly to marry an artistic man. The plotline seems to be: when a capable control-freak marries a messy, emotional artist, affairs and heartbreak ensue. Perhaps it was a combination of the predictable scenes and flat dialogue, but this is really too easy a stereotype for me to suspend disbelief for. 

There are also too many characters, mainly Wendell's lovers and female friends, who are too carelessly written to be memorable. 

If the composer who cannot hear can create the beautiful Eroica symphony by himself, a production from respected names and commited sponsors really ought to strive harder and reach higher.