Interview with the actors from Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a romantic comedy. Are you a romantic at heart?

Pang: As time goes on, relationships lose their ‘romantic’ aspect and start to take on more of the ‘comedy’ side of things. Basically you gotta laugh, or you’ll cry.

Kweh: Of course! Only a romantic would charge around Fort Canning Park at night spouting beautiful verse.

Beatrice and Benedick engage in a merry war of the sexes. Who was the last person you had a love-hate relationship with?

Pang: Some b**ch called Inland Revenue. She just won’t leave me alone, couldn’t understand that I’m just not that into her.

Hero and Claudio are smitten with each other instantly. Do you believe in love at first sight?

Pang: After half a dozen vodkas, I’ve been known to try to chat up hairy, burly men.

Kweh: It’s the only kind worth believing in.

Chan: Of course not! It’s lust at first sight! Lust drives us most of the time and, if we’re lucky, ‘love’ sneaks in and hits you over the head – hopefully for your partner too.

Where do you find the inspiration for playing your character?

Pang: From every relationship I’ve ever had with any female. It’s like rehab.

Kweh: Ninety-five per cent William Shakespeare; five per cent life.

Chan: Well, I don’t like to do too much research – I always like to just let the words, other characters and whole design of the play slowly wash over me. Then I watch films, plays and people, and sooner or later something attracts me or grabs my attention. By and large, though, it all comes from within. You can only play different elements of yourself; it’s just what you choose to bring out that’s interesting.

'It’s a farcical feel-good frolic about how, in spite of the age-old battle between the sexes, at the end of the day, men and women just can’t live without each other – at least not without a good lawyer.'

The play encompasses a number of conspiratorial acts. Do you have any conspiracy theories you’d like to share?

Pang: My wife and kids are conspiring to drive me out of my mind and into an early grave. But the joke’s on them because my employers got there way before them.

If you were going on a picnic, what is one thing you would be sure to pack?

Pang: Mosquito repellent, wet wipes and condoms. So far I’ve only ever needed the mosquito repellent and wet wipes.

Chan: Roast chicken!

Is the play really ‘much ado about nothing’?

Pang: It’s a farcical feel-good frolic about how, in spite of the age-old battle between the sexes, at the end of the day, men and women just can’t live without each other – at least not without a good lawyer.

Chan: Yes it is! There is a lot of drama and hysterics over very little in the end. But isn’t that what all of life seems in retrospect?

In the future, if you could play any Shakespeare character, who would it be?

Pang: Lady Macbeth.

What’s the greatest difficulty about performing outdoors in Singapore?

Kweh: Whiffs of great hawker food distracting us.

Chan: And it’s damn hot! Two years ago, we did A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I was in three layers of clothing. I was also on a fake leg contraption because I’d torn my Achilles tendon and my lower leg was in a cast. It was such an effort for me to come down from the changing rooms to my position backstage that I was drenched. This was in the five minutes before we started!

Much Ado About Nothing runs from 7-31 May at Fort Canning Park

The Actors