The rise and fall of a despot - in 90 minutes and 300 years
Daniel Nelson * Photo: Lidia Crisafulli
No Particular Order is a 90-minute play that covers a lot of ground: 30 years in the first part, 300 years between parts two and three. And the final few minutes take place on a spaceship.
So Singaporean playwright Joel Tan is certainly ambitious, as he takes on the impact of the rise and fall of a despot. The villain is not Putin, Bolsonaro, Orban, Duterte, Xi, the Myanmar Generals: the dictator and the place are unspecified. The emphasis is on the people: “Beneath every violation of civil autonomy, there are humans, behind every resistance to power, there are individuals. And these people are not different to us but identical, they are not heroic or remarkable, but ordinary.”
Of course, he doesn’t say everything that can be said about reactions to dictatorship, but his sequence of moments of resistance is gripping and moving, if uneven. Tan says he is “more broadly interested in dissecting power, looking at the relationship between individuals and the state, how living under great power distorts ordinary people, how people make it through.”
His snapshots, using just four actors and little scenery, will hit each audience member differently. The rapid flow of short scenes (which Tan has described as ‘like a flicker book’) range from shooting birds to clear the way for a victory parade, to a fashion house, from a political protest to an attempted sexual assault.
Oddly, among the angst and turmoil, it was a couple of quiet post-despot scenes that struck me most – particularly – perhaps because I’m a journalist – an exchange in which a teacher is told that using the work of an out-of-favour poet in the classroom is unacceptable to those “upstairs”. A first small step on the way to despotism.
So, “in a space beyond time, or at least history”, which prevails: power or empathy? It’s up to you to decide. The audience, says Tan, must “draw meaning and conclusions.”
* No Particular Order is at Theatre 503, 503 Battersea Park Road, SE11 until 18 June. Info: https://theatre503.com/ 7978 7040
15 June, Parent and Baby: enjoy a spot of theatre without the need to hire a babysitter. Other audience members can also booking for this performance, 12noon
17 June, Recorded for archive purposes. The audience will be at reduced capacity to accommodate the camera.