Ninart's weekend parables
Play
Naked Masks offers one play with a priest and another with a vampire
Fresh from “I Love Syndrome”, veteran director Ninart Boonpothong is presenting two more plays – “Doubt” and “Khunying Meena: The Vampire Killer” – back to back over three weekends.
The double scheduling is more an accident than a burst of enthusiasm, the artistic director of Naked Masks says. The flooding pushed “Doubt” backward on the calendar.
Opening tonight, it’s his adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt: A Parable”, which won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Play as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Film buffs will know the screen version starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
“I was highly impressed with the play when I read it,” Ninart says, “and I also liked the film very much. But I feel there are other possible takes on the story, which is about a crisis in human faith, about what we choose to believe.
“This directly reflects what’s going on in our country when we start to have doubts about something in which we previously had strong faith. Each of the four characters in the play has different beliefs, yet they have to find a way to be together in the same place – the Catholic school where they work.”
Shanley’s play was set in New York just after the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy. Ninart has moved it to modern-day Thailand.
He’s cast seasoned stage actor Pisal Pattanapeeradech to play the priest accused of child molestation. “It’s the first time we’ve worked together. He also attended a Catholic school, and we share the same interpretation of this character and the play.”
The show is being staged at the 30-seat Siam Youth Centre on the second floor of the building next to Novotel Bangkok Siam Square. Siam Youth, Ninart explains, is like a Catholic organisation, offering young people a place to gather.
Starting next Thursday, a week from today, “Khunying Meena: The Vampire Killer” stalks the stage once more. Ninart wrote it, completely in verse.
“It’s a play within a play, set at the Preedalai Playhouse during the reign of King Rama VI, which was a golden age for Thai theatre. A troupe from Germany that’s performing ‘Faust’ there includes a vampire.”
The production style is fantasy, but Ninart insists he’s not riding the “Twilight” bandwagon. Actually, it’s another parable, a political one, examining how Western ideology came into Siam.
“It offers a strong debate on government systems, but I’m sure the audience will understand that we’re not against any ideology. Rather, we’re showing, with much respect, how some people are constrained by certain systems.”
Ninart has made changes to the play since its run earlier this year, boosting the dramatic action while reducing the dialogue and lowering the tension.
It will be at the 70-seat RMA Institute, an art gallery.
DOUBLE DARE
- See “Doubt” today through Monday at the Siam Youth Centre.
- “Khunying Meena: The Vampire Hunter” is at the RMA Institute on Sukhumvit Soi 22 from December 15 to 18 and December 22 to 25.
- Show time is 7.30pm and there’s a 2pm matinee for “Doubt” this Sunday. Both plays are in Thai.
- Tickets cost Bt250 (Bt150 for students). Call (080) 281 1698, e-mail [email protected] or visit NakedMasksNetwork.|blogspot.com.
