EMILY OF EMERALD HILL-Nicole Cheah

We went to watch Emily of Emerald Hill played by Ivan Heng at the Esplanade. I was surprised that it was only one actor doing the whole play, as it was 2 hours long.

Ivan Heng I thought was really amazing as if you didn’t know that a man was playing a woman you would really think it was a woman. He’s mannerism on stage was exactly like a woman you would not mistake him for a man. Honestly, I admire him for playing a woman with much confidence, which was so convincing!

In order to make him sound and act like a woman, he used a higher voice range and talked with much enthusiasm, walked with his hips swaying like a typical aunty, he had his hands flying everywhere as he spoke to exaggerate everything he said as he was playing a nyonya. I also thought that he was really good at changing his accent to make it convincing during the part where he made several phone calls. He just changed the pitch of his voice and the emphasis on certain parts of the words to suit the various types of accent he used.

I loved the way he changed characters as it was very distinct and it could clearly be seen without us wondering what just happened. To change characters, he would suddenly jerk after walking really fast and turn around in an instant like “BAM! IM SOMEONE ELSE” with a completely different gesture and posture to characterize his new character.  That was really cool.

I also liked how he talked very quickly during one scene where he was nagging at the children to do this and that. Though he spoke really quickly like a bullet train he was able to enunciate his words clearly so that the audience were still able to understand despite the speed as normally when people attempt to speak fast it would come out as gibberish.

All in all I thought that Ivan Heng is a talented actor and really good in changing characters, as he is able to change his pitch of voice distinctively and change his mannerism to show the contrast in the character that he was playing and the character he changed into later. This allows the audience to clearly understand that it is now a different character and not be lost.

I really enjoyed this play it was something different.