Can there be art after the Holocaust? Benjamin Yeoh attempts to make it in Lost in Peru, a young play of big questions that ponders whether the pain of losing your lover means anything in a world where millions are tortured and murdered. The question has, of course, been posed may times before, but Yeoh gropes for new ways to express it.
On a triangular raised platform stand two men and a woman. They acknowledge the audience. The pretence is that this is not a theatre, but a conference on torture victims that is giving the survivors a chance to tell their terrible stories. There is the Turkish Kurd unjustly imprisoned for 11 years, an Iraqi Kurdish student brutally beaten and abused by Saddam Hussein's bully boys, the Catholic priest arrested under Ferdinand Marcos's regime in the Philippines. The tales of rape, humiliation, physical and mental torture pour out until you want to cover your eyes and stop your ears.
Then there is a sudden change. The public forum gives way to private sorrow, as a man recounts his grief at the loss of his lover. Can his grief and pain possibly compare to the spilt blood of children? Why are some tragedies more tragic than others? Apparently, Lost in Peru was originally two short plays and the seams still show. While Yeoh and director Sarah Levinsky should get praise for trying to push the boundaries of form and style, both probably need reminding that there is no point in innovations and performance styles whose tricksiness threaten to bore the audience to death. Alienation really can be taken too far.
The first half, with its testimonies of torture victims, reproduced out of context, often seems gratuitous, while the second part seldom raises its poetic gaze above the navel. But, goodness, it is great to see a young writer reaching out beyond his own experience.
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