It was last Saturday evening that we went again to Taman Ismail Marzuki, Cikini, to see another performance at Festival Teater Jakarta 2007. It's not that we knew that the play was good, it's more of coincidence that we had time and we wanted to spend it there.
This was the last play at the festival that we watched. I wish we could see many more plays in this Festival. We missed some of the good plays, simply because we didn't try to get more information, even though it's abundantly available for free. The Festival Teater Jakarta should now be included in a must see festival list for next year.
Penagih Hutang, the debt collector, was adapted by Asim A. from "The Bear", a famous work of Anton Pavlovich Chekov (1860-1904), Russia's most important dramatist. The satire drama, played that night by Komunitas Kaki-5, was first published in 1888. It tells a story about a creditor who hounds a young lonely widow, but after the fights they become so impressed to each other, and finally he proposes her a marriage.
The lonely widow seldom leaves her room after the death of her husband about half a year ago, and it makes the house helper worries about her, and he asks her to stop the prolonged mourning and back to normal life.
There's an unknown guest knocking the door, and the lady asks the house helper not let him in as she doesn't want to meet anybody, but he insists and manages to tame the house helper.
Apparently her late husband left a huge amount of debt, and the collector asks her to pay it immediately. She says if it's true she will pay it, but he has to wait until somebody coming from out of town, and soon they fall into fierce arguments.
The lady asks him to leave, but he rejects it, and he stubbornly stays until he gets the payment. The lady leaves her alone, and goes back to her room.
Silently the reclusive widow observes of what debt collector's doing with great interest. The more she observes, the stronger the strange feeling she has towards the man who's so frustrated with his life.
Life's so hard. Nobody likes him, and it's so damn difficult to collect money from people. Debt collector is also a human being, with all the strengths and weaknesses.
But he then finds out that the lady is actually giving him some sorts of attention, and his heart's blooming.
The widow's feeling towards him becomes stronger, and she finally follows her heart to go out and meet him, but this time she wants to be looked beautiful and she's busy putting make up on her face and select one of the best dress to wear.
When a man falls in love, he becomes so obsessed, and will try many things to conquer the woman's heart. Sometimes he will try to look for an answer or justification up in the air.
It's not that easy for the woman to accept the debt collector proposal, despite her late husband betrayal for having a lover. He stubbornly seduces the woman, and asks her to accept his proposal, or else she has to pay her late husband debt immediately.
Can not stand for the pressure, she asks for a duel with pistols, but she desperately asks the debt collector to teach her how to use the pistol.
The lonely widow can't help to go out in a rush from her sacred room to prevent the debt collector from leaving the place because of the frustration he has after being rejected by her.
The widow breaks into tears and finally opens up, and there's a happy ending as they are united.
The end of the show. It's certainly a relief for the group members after a long preparations and hard works.
Penagih Hutang was directed by Si Way Budha who chose to use a batak style dialect for the debt collector character. It's not easy to consistently converse using a dialect that is not our mother tongue, and hence once in a while the unique dialect were missing during the play.
The stage arrangements are excellent. This is one of the strengths of the group works. The lighting certainly could be better especially to be able to visualize the changes of the scenes. As for the music, I think it needs a more creative approach to strengthen emotional moments and conflict situations.
It's an 8.5 out of 10.
Label: Arts and Culture, Entertainment
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