Wharf 1 Theatre, November 25
3/10
The appropriate venue for this play was the bottom drawer. About an hour into its 90 minutes, I sensed my partner’s tolerance hitting the red line, and whispered, “There’s not too much more.” But there was, because every minute was an eternity, while, across the road, three-and-a-half hours of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? blasts past.
Of course, that’s a real play. This is… what? Something someone should have axed before it hit firstly Brisbane and Singapore, and then landed on the Wharf 1 stage like an indisposition of the digestive system.
A co-production between STC, La Boite Theatre and Singapore Repertory Theatre sounds like a worthy enterprise in theory, especially when playwright Merlynn Tong has previously delivered the widely acclaimed Golden Blood. Perhaps it was up to director Courtney Stewart (La Boite’s artistic director) to tell Tong it wasn’t ready – and probably would never be. Perhaps there wasn’t time, and instead Stewart decided to sugar-coat it in set, sound, costumes and lights, and hoped no one would notice.
But an indisposition of the digestive system is hard to hide. It’s why nappies have so many layers.
Tong sets her play in Money Money Karaoke, a newborn bar run by Mandy (Tong) and Xavier (Zac Boulton). On the opening night, they’re short on customers until the ghosts of Mandy’s grandmother (Kimie Tsukakoshi) and mother (Seong Hui Xuan) arrive, and embark on a little remodelling of Mandy’s life.
Underpinning this is a profound tragedy from Tong’s past: her own mother ran a karaoke bar, and committed suicide when Tong was only 14, having already lost her father to cancer when she six. So writing this allowed her to imagine conversations she never had.
Rather than confront that pain, however, Tong’s penned an intended laugh-out-loud comedy that barely tugs at the smile muscles. There are a couple of cute moments: the ghosts are constantly hungry, for instance, but can’t eat. Instead, they make clucking sounds while twitching like marionettes, and then somehow suck in their nutrition. The choreography and performances of the two women in these moments are genuinely entertaining.
James Lew also distracts us with some lollies in the set and costumes design, although the karaoke performances which punctuate the show – as light relief! – are a sin against music. Composer and sound designer Guy Webster not only assails our ears with excruciating songs (albeit in keeping with the idiom) sung badly, but backs up the comic-book action with comic-book sound effects, consisting of more explosions of white noise than is fair on the ears.
By the time the morals about mother-daughter relationships and having the courage to break one’s own rules engulfed us, I just wanted to be somewhere else. Vying for the silliest play I’ve seen, this made a director, playwright and actors who are capable of good work look fourth rate.
Until December 14.