A Stranger At Home
A mish-mash of several plays by Quah Sy Ren as well as essays co-written with Ng How Wee. Alas, what might work better on the page does not translate well to the stage. A couple of interesting points were made. For example, the fact that Singaporeans had no sense of the past, literally, since old buildings were constantly being torn down to make way for new ones. Even the dead were not spared this constant redevelopment and had to be exhumed as well. Or the ironic story of how Hokkien, driven to extinction by officialdom, turned out to be the sole language of communication between a professor and a Malay cleaning woman. However, these were buried deep within an overly self-indulgent whole. The entire Ying Ru-Joan-Tim triangle served only to grate while the Wu Yue story, narrated in Hokkien with patchy surtitles, further tested one’s patience. The music and projected visuals often seemed unnecessary and ended up distracting one’s attention.