The whole play other than the beginning slide show and the inserted movie was captivating. A must see show this year. Audience were completely carried away by the emotionally charged actors and actresses of the Theatre of the Silence, even they used only sign language, and of course by the powerful voice and magical performance of Bettina So. Her portrayal of the lead character Loung was immense as if she had lived Loung's youth herself, showing us what a five-year old girl had gone through under the terrible Khmer Rouge era. No fancy props existed. The tensions and the emotions of the characters were fully radiated from their bodies and faces as well as the meticulous arrangement of the scenes. The lighting and sound effects were perfectly fused into the play, especially in the scenes of the nightmares of Loung and in the girls' fanatical roar of support for Pol Pot in the Training Camp. I believe the author would have been stunned if she had seen this performance. And this is in fact an outcry for the two million Cambodians tortured and killed during the Pol Pot era.
The director is very ambitious to include many messages in the performance. Other than showing the actual experience that Loung and other Cambodians had gone through, the play also showed her personal struggle to leave her hatred behind and to live on. In addition, the director wants to show the audience that this evil consequence was in fact caused by different powers including the United States, China, and the former Soviet Union. And maybe because of this, the play ended at Loung's reunion with her brothers rather than their departure for the United States. Otherwise, the play would have been contradicted itself: accusing the perpetrator on one hand while having the characters tried all their efforts to flee to that particular country on the other hand!
Though the performance was in near perfection, the movie inserted in the play really did not match the theme of the performance. Nor did it enhance the performance in any way. The director could have just shown words on the screen as a denunciation of the Khmer Rouge rather than using a funny movie like this. The bizarre slide show was also pointless here and nearly turned the program into a tourism promo! A minor factual flaw of the play should be noted in that the Khmer Rouge did not allow girls to wear long hair, but in the show the brigade leader and some other girls have their hair covering their ears.
It is interesting to see movies in recent years that keep showing how people are afraid of or attracted to the dark side of the world and change their principles as in the Lords of the Ring,and Star Wars. We all see how the American and British troops forces into Iraq with thoughts of their own rather than the Iraqi people in mind. And in the beginning of this play, it stated that the prolonged tragedy in Cambodia was the result of power struggle among different powerful nations. Yet, the author of the book, Ms Loung Ung, has lived in the United States ever since she escaped from Cambodia, while her sister and two brothers are still staying in Cambodia after the Pol Pot era. Why would people rather stay in the United States even after their hated ruler was no longer in their country? Have they been attracted by the dark force, or?
本網站內一切內容之版權均屬國際演藝評論家協會（香港分會）及原作者所有，未經本會及/或原作者書面同意，不得轉載。