How Broken broke our hearts

When I saw the poster for Teater Broken, my first thought was: ahh, another heavy TV3 staged Malay drama. To add on to that, many who have seen it before me recalled how bad they cried watching it.

Teater Broken was a production of Projek BB, produced by Nissa Azis and Wafi Saidin, written and directed by Arshad Adam with assistance from Omar Yunus. The play revolved around the character Fitri (played by Haikal Hamdan), who lives in an abusive household.

I expected this to be another feeble attempt at raising social awareness, like how many productions did. I expected 2 dimensional characters portrayed with stereotypes of how domestic abuse will look like.

I underestimated them.

Arshad Adam did such good research for the script and it was written beautifully. The play, realist throughout except for a dream sequence in its opening, tugged hearts and showed us the clearest window possible towards domestic abuse. Never having experienced any abuse myself, it was not a story I was familiar with, yet, I cried for every scene. What made me love it more was also how Arshad set the play in current, average income typical Malay society, yet did not touch on any stereotypes or racial sensitivity, making it a play that can relate to anyone.

Newcomer Haikal Hamdan gets an A for effort, despite it being his first time on stage. His carriage of Fitri succeeded in showing us the pain and suffering of an abuse victim, despite some short moments of abrupt mood transitions. Likewise for singer-songwriter Leaism, who played Ibu, Fitri’s mother (also her first theatre appearance), Lea’s minimal energy and simple movements were paired well with her already established stage presence and groundedness, creating a sympathetic weakness and redha (surrenderness) in Ibu’s character. This worked very well in the third scene, where after the dream sequence, Fitri compared his dream to reality. This, being my favourite scene, was where Ibu prepared breakfast in silence, a plaster on her forehead. Abi, Fitri’s stepfather came down, and casually apologised. With few words and a play of expressions, this scene set the mood for the entire play and tells audience the background of these characters simply so.

If we have an award for Best Villain of the year, it goes to antagonist Abi/Ustaz Rizal, played by Fakhri Shafiq. Helped by sharp and well-rehearsed fight choreography, Fakhri carried the energy and anger of an abuser so well in his beating up scenes, in his anxious Ustaz scene, and in his rape scenes. Already wowed by his great acting, the cherry on top was the fact that Ustaz Rizal’s character was not just a hot tempered troubled man – he was also a victim himself and he has psychological problems which the society, including his wife, failed to notice. Kudos to Arshad for including this message in the play.

And last but not least, the character that won the audience’s heart – Cikgu Ariffin played by Surnia Fizul. Have I mentioned how creative and strong the direction was for this play? The placing of Cikgu Ariffin made it more so. Cikgu Ariffin’s introduction scene was of him entering Fitri’s class for the first time, as he is replacing their previous class teacher who retired. Here, Arshad inserted audience interaction, where Cikgu Ariffin calls out the audience members to stand up and introduce themselves, like students do with new teachers. I am still fan-girling over the character of Cikgu Ariffin – he is the manifestation of all teachers we grew to love – he cares, he makes awesome jokes, and he wants to help you beyond just homeworks. Cikgu Ariffin becomes the key to solving Fitri’s problems, and I am glad that his character exists. The cliche is that a happy ending or a saviour will come and save the world, but that was not the message here – the message is that a saviour can exists if we all try to be one. We all, should be, more like Cikgu Ariffin.

My verdict?

I have seen about 2 dozens of Malay theatre throughout my career, and I can boldly say this is the best one I have seen. This production should have been staged in bigger theatres, and should receive sponsorship to tour and spread awareness.

Ratings: 4.5/5