Emily of Emerald Hill~ VERA WAS HERE.

Emily of Emerald Hill

Talk about alliteration! Haha anyways, yes, the most anticipated production of the year, possibly of 10 years, ever since W!ld R!ce first started out. Personally, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to watching a 2 hour long monologue, more to the supper afterwards. (I’m sorry ,I love food, okay.) Not the point. The point is, that I couldn’t imagine myself stuck in the seat listening to only one person speaking for 2 hours or more. It seemed so boring, and I didn’t know what to expect.

However, when I first laid my eyes on the set, I knew the monologue had to be good. The set was really queer, as if there were many dimensions on the stage itself. I’m sorry I’m off tracking, but I could go on and on about the set and lights and sounds but I shall stop myself. Anyways, the most interesting part was that Ivan Heng played the role of a female nonya perfectly, so perfectly that I almost forgot that he was a male, if not for the fact that his voice was so low. His mannerisms (like the way he moved his hands with the handkerchief, the way he walked and spoke) were very much like a typical “auntie” and I was very impressed that he could impersonate a female even better than most actresses themselves. It requires a lot of skill and definitely a very good actor to play a role of another gender so this most certainly says something about Ivan Heng. There was a distinct change of character with the help of lighting. For example, when he wanted to change from a male character to a female one, the lights changed from black to pink, which was a generic stereotype. Whenever Ivan Heng wanted to change to the role of the father, we would always be ‘holding’ a pipe and this made it very clear that the character of father was being played. It was really cool how despite this being a monologue, Ivan made it seem as if there were more characters than just him onstage. He managed to create an atmosphere of more than just one actor and I think that this is a huge plus-point for Emily of Emerald hill.