Hi, Can You Hear Me?

The Necessary Stage
Esplanade Theatre Studio
March 21, 8pm

Rarely has a play in Singapore been this ambitious about what it seeks to enfold. Playwright A Yagnya’s second staged work is a cosmic grappling of nearly all modern issues, inventively centred on happenchance in a Tokyo bar, as well as a parallel watering hole located in the limbo between life and death, presided over by a stalking tiger (Sharda Harrison).

That should be enough to give a hint of the capaciousness of imagination in Hi, Can You Hear Me?, which is not afraid to reach backwards in time to princess Miao-Shan in ancient China or forward to an artificial-intelligence (AI) caregiver able to sustain placating white lies.

It is packed with serious themes, drawing intuitive associations, for instance, between the colonial bombing of a cliff-carved Guanyin statue and the twisting of the narrative in the Gaza conflict; man’s bloodlust that ruins the environment and white man’s penchant to sleep with Asian women; the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident and the misogynistic blaming of women for ill fortune in India.

It is a lot, and at first alienating, the chronology of this surreal edifice having been intentionally jumbled up. But then the fractured pieces click into place and the work becomes richly rewarding.

Poignant performances by the cast, speaking in English, Japanese and Mandarin (William Blake’s The Tyger in Mandarin, anyone?), embody the larger-than-life tragedies in their trembling and defiant frames and ensure this is no mere cognitive exercise.

Moving naturally between the personal and the public, the human and the cosmic at speed, the story retains a fierce emotional tenor occasionally broken by musical interludes, also present in Yagnya’s previous play and fast becoming a distinct, mature signature.

Audiences, from the start, are introduced to a cast of characters that include the ailing Shimizu, played so vulnerably by Doppo Narita, grieving for the loss of his wife and losing his memory.

He is seen making curry with the guidance of an AI caregiver, which is able to communicate with Harrison’s limbo bar, a mostly glum space where a deep frustration with the state of affairs festers.

There, a frequent patron is the Bible-quoting Chinese deity Guanyin, performed by the versatile virtuoso Zelda Tatiana Ng, speaking in three languages and also singing in Spanish.

Meanwhile, a reporter, John – Rodney Oliveiro doing quite a bit of the narrative heavy-lifting – carries out a long-distance affair with the older Sindhu (Sukania Venugopal), who is not afraid to stretch silence.

Their stories come together in surprising and satisfying ways, though each also has a chasm of unsaid concerns and woes. The challenging ways in which these are revealed match the fleeting nature of real-life human interactions, where so much is only glimpsed, lives interacting, but never fully making a connection.

Brian Gothong Tan’s multimedia expands this imperfect knowledge further, including related images and digitally created representations of suffering that wordlessly marshal so many links between tragedies.

The “sensitive” content tag that Instagram warns users of are removed so audiences are confronted with suffering. There are live cinema and filmed elements to mimic lagging Zoom calls and a tiger hunt. It is all perfect for a script that integrates technology into its uncanny cosmology, with the shallow Esplanade Theatre Studio space meaning that projections are often broken up by the set – adding to the dissonance and multiple focal points.

Co-directors Yagnya and Alvin Tan placed sound designer Jevon Chandra on stage with all his equipment, giving a fascinating look at how soundscapes are created live. He even gets to hold up a “The End” cue card that replaces the usual curtain call by actors.

There is so much intentionality in this sophisticated production; a complex collaboration among sensitive artists willing to subvert the normal. Yagnya’s synchronous approach to storytelling is a reminder that there is so much happening everywhere, all at once, that should be allowed to penetrate people’s carefully constructed individual cocoons.

Book It / Hi, Can You Hear Me?

Where: Esplanade Theatre Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive
When: Till March 31; Wednesday to Friday, 8pm, Saturday and Sunday, 3pm
Admission: From $38
Info: str.sg/Ad6S