Our reality is an intriguing puzzle box of assumptions that are teased out in Christopher Chen’s play, Caught. The audience is welcomed to an exhibition of the works of Lin Bo (Louis Le) but in a subsequent interview by journalists, Joyce (Jessica Clarke) and Bob (David Whiteley), the truth of Bo’s past is forensically examined – a form of interrogation equivalent to what he had experienced as a dissident in his home country.
The very nature of this interrogation becomes the subject of an art installation by Wang Min (Jing-Xuan Chan) where the polemics of cultural assumptions become a source of frustration for the curator (Jesica Clarke) but was this all just a play – we see inside the actors dressing room where the artists playing Lin Bo and Wang Min discover the truth about their respective relationships.
Each of these scenes connect and Chen constantly negates each reality and examines the ‘lies’ and deceptions that are an integral part of the fabrications we create for ourselves as countries, as communities and as individuals that provide us with a safe framework for existence.
The best place to realise this is, of course, the theatre where audiences delight in the suspension of reality and see it as entertainment. We are, however, constantly practicing this art of deception in daily life.
This play suits Red Stitch to a tee. The actors segue from one persona to another making us believe until we shouldn’t.
Silvia Shao’s set is simplicity personified – black and white flats insinuating a gallery. The falling of the ‘second wall’ revealing the dressing room makes one believe we have entered the inner sanctum.
Director Jean Tong has brought out the best in the cast as they transition from one form of presentation to another.
Each form is believable and willingly accepted until Chen challenges just how readily we want to believe – and nowhere do we want to believe more than in a theatre. This production is Red Stitch at its best.
Until September 11. www.redstitch.net

• Review by David McLean