Even before
the recent financial upheaval in the United States, how we make and
spend money had dominated newspaper headlines and coffeeshop talk in
Singapore for months. First, there was the property boom last year.
People became millionaires overnight. Singaporeans were buying apartments
at sky-high prices not because they actually wanted to call these places
home but simply as investment opportunities. Then the bubble burst.
The price of everyday items began to rise. The Straits Times
quickly lost interest in which estates had the greatest en bloc payout
potential and started surveying supermarkets to find out where households
could buy the cheapest bag of rice.
Against this backdrop, a story about a Singaporean family trying to
decide whether to sell their ramshackle apartment for a profit is extremely
timely. And anything Mediacorp can do (the En Bloc drama series),
local theatre can do better, right?
Playwright Jean Tay has always had a way with metaphors and so it is
not surprising that Boom soon reveals itself to be more than
just about how people are influenced by wealth or the lack of it. Initially,
it does appear that property agent Ah Beng (Sebastian Tan) is trying
to convince his aged mother (Fanny Kee) to sell the family home simply
because of the money it can bring them and the change of lifestyle which
that offers. But we eventually discover that Ah Beng actually wants
to leave the apartment behind because of the bad memories he has of
his childhood days, the most scarring being the time he is chained overnight
to a tree in the garden by his father. His mother, on the other hand,
is unwilling to leave precisely because of her own memories of the place:
it is where she started a new life as a young wife and mother in the
1970s; and though her husband abandoned her many years ago, she still
believes that one day he will return - and how will he find her if she
is not there?
The tension between Ah Beng and his mother is a metaphor for the age-old
conflict between those who want Singapore to be a gleaming city of skyscrapers
and those who prefer the homespun, rustic charm of yesteryear. For example,
the tree, which is represented physically onstage, reminded me of the
old tree in the middle of Braddell Road which became the subject of
much debate when the government wanted to chop it down to expand the
road. The play speaks of the enduring war between the old and the new,
the past and the future, the idealism youth and the pragmastism of experience
- and it is clear from the cynical ending where Tay's sympathies lie.
She even introduces a sub-plot about a civil servant, Jeremiah (Chua
Enlai) from the Ministry of Land who has to exhume a corpse because
the land is being returned to the government. It is clearly an attempt
to emphasize how human emotion and dignity can sometimes be crushed
under the onslaught of efficiency. She seems to be saying that we have
forgotten that right before pledging to achieve "prosperity and progress
for our nation", we also pledge to achieve "happiness".
Tay's wonderful ear for dialogue and cast of colourful comic characters
such as the neighbourhood gossip and Ah Beng's colleagues make the philosophizing
go down a little easier but, as the play progressed, I wondered why
she bothered with the overt message-making at all. There are funny moments,
for example, the opening musical number where Ah Beng is reminded by
his colleagues to use words like "cusp" and "orioles" when trying to
close a deal because they are not just selling a property but a lifestyle
- but Tay is not adding to the conversation, she is merely re-presenting
it. Instead, where I found Boom to be dramatically powerful
was in the simple family narrative that Tay had set up so convincingly.
Ah Beng and his mother come across as authentic characters, fully realized
and instantly recognizable. Tay is aided here by Kee's impassioned,
lived-in performance and a very sincere and endearing one from Tan who
shows that he can do more than cabaret and outsized comedy. Together,
they make every scene they share stir my memories of conversations between
my mother and me as well as those between my mother and her mother.
Tay illustrates so accurately the great gulf of sadness that can eventually
develop between child and parent when the day comes that the two no
longer dream the same dream. Worse, as we see in Arthur Miller's Death
of A Salesman and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun,
one dream can even end up savagely butchering the other. The playwright
also manages to render so movingly the mother's love for her husband
and everything that represents him (including the apartment he bought
for her) and how her love endures beyond time, beyond hardship, beyond
betrayal. In doing so, she captures how utterly inspirational but also
unspeakingly sad such an unconditional love can be.
However, Tay needs to have more faith in her own writing and also in
the audience. All her explicit speechifying and exposition and self-conscious
alluding to wider sociopolitical themes are, in fact, unnecessary and
distracting. I would have been quite happy if the entire Ministry of
Land arc lampooning the civil service had been done away with. The play's
wider concerns are already built into the story of Ah Beng and his mother
and need minimum signposting, and the tragedy of these very human characters
is what really forms Boom's beating heart.
In terms of the staging, director Tracie Pang had some strong ideas.
Working with set designer Wong Chee Wai, she created a split-stage space
that allowed for a lot of movement and some nice visual surprises: when
Jeremiah approached what looked like a mass of rock in a graveyard,
a sudden change in lighting dramatically revealed the decaying corpse
of Ah Beng's father (Zachary Ho) underneath. For every good idea though,
another backfired. The imposing figure of the tree was very striking
but I'm afraid the dramatic moment when Ah Beng chopped the tree down
was unintentionally comic because of the way the tree (presumably made
out of fabric and decorated netting) fell - or rather collapsed in a
heap. Similarly, the surreal tone Pang adopted for a couple of the Ministry
of Land scenes to satirize the bureaucracy of the civil service was
not always successful: there was an uncomfortable scene in which Chermaine
Ang as the Director of the Ministry of Land had to awkwardly (and inexpicably)
chase Chua around the office by rolling her swivel chair in starts and
stops after him. Her greatest misstep, though, was in how she handled
the transitions between scenes, some of which were uncomfortably long,
presumably because of the ensemble cast's costume changes. For these,
she simply resorted to constant blackouts after very short scenes, which
was extremely jarring, or had Ho make inexplicable noises onstage that
pretended to have some relevance but were quite clearly there just to
kill time.
Speaking of the ensemble actors, both Ang and Brendon Fernandez fell
off the radar suddenly a few years ago but seem to be making a comeback
in the local theatre scene and their returns are most welcome. While
Fernandez was a little hit and miss (side note: no self-respecting gay
man would have had a haircut like the wig Fernandez wears as Jeremiah's
flamboyant Ministry of Land colleague), he excelled as one of Ah Beng's
yuppie colleagues. For her part, Ang turned in one winning performance
after another as a no-nonsense bureaucrat, a gossipy old woman, a homely
young mother in the 1970s and a 21st century property agent. She has
a vitality that is always a pleasure to watch on stage and I hope, this
time, she sticks around.
First Impression
There's an excellent 90-minute play tucked away in here. At the core
of Boom is a stirring story about an elderly woman who is unable
to give up the past because it means as much to her as the future does
to her son. Her love for her husband and everything that represents
him including the ramshackle apartment her son wants to sell, endures
beyond time, beyond hardship and betrayal, and is movingly rendered
by playwright Jean Tay and an impassioned Fanny Kee. Tay has a wonderful
ear for dialogue and invests this simple family drama with heartfelt
emotion and easy, unforced humour. It is disappointing, then, that Tay
and director Tracie Pang do not have enough confidence to let this story
stand on its own. Instead, they overload the audience with a sub-plot
about the bureaucracy of the civil service and quite a bit of unnecessary
explanation (as if worried that the audience will not "get it") and
theatrical flash, resulting in a series of extremely short, overwrought
scenes particularly in the first half of the play which add little other
than to extend Boom's running time to a gratuitous two hours.
They distract from what would otherwise have been a truly masterful
piece of work. Still, definitely worth watching. |
"Tay illustrates so accurately the great gulf of sadness that can
eventually develop between child and parent when the day comes that
the two no longer dream the same dream"
Credits
Playwright: Jean Tay
Director and Costume Designer: Tracie Pang
Set Designer: Wong Chee Wai
Lighting Designer: Yo Shao Ann
Sound Designer: Darren Ng
Stage Manager: Toh Lin
Cast: Chermain Ang, Chua Enlai, Brendon Fernandez,
Zachary Ho, Fanny Kee and Sebastian Tan
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