Singapore's `Boom' Shows How Fast City's Bull Market Unraveled
Review by Adam Majendie
Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Ten years ago, Singaporean playwright Jean Tay wrote ``Plunge,'' about the effect the 1997 financial crisis had on ordinary people. Yesterday, as the city's stock market dipped to a two-year low, her new play opened. It's called ``Boom.''
The play was inspired by a real-estate bubble in the country that prompted a frenzy of demolition to build blocks of new (and almost invariably smaller) apartments. Between the time it was conceived last year and the opening night, things have clearly changed.
``What a difference a year makes,'' wrote Tay in the program notes. A year? Try a week.
Tay's play is funny, clever, and even a couple of months ago was spot on in its examination of Singaporeans' obsession with the soaring real estate market, the key generator of personal wealth on an island where every square inch is zoned and precious.
It tells the story of property agent Ah Beng (Sebastian Tan), who is trying to persuade his mother (Fanny Kee) to sell her old crumbling apartment so they can move to a modern block. At the same time, civil servant Jeremiah (Chua Enlai) is facing the knotty problem of explaining to a corpse that it must be exhumed and cremated because there is no longer room on the island for the dead.
(Since 1998, the government has restricted the burial period to 15 years so that there's room in the cemeteries for fresh corpses.)
Connected Stories
The two strands are connected and Tay draws the parallel between the forced eviction of the mother -- developers in Singapore can buy and demolish an old block if they can get 80 percent of the residents to agree -- and the forced exhumation of the dead body.
The corpse (Zachary Ho) has the show-stealing part and most of the best lines -- ``I want to be covered with maggots'' is hard to beat for a start. Yet the most moving performance is Kee's, struggling to hang on to her past, her hopes and her apartment.
Wong Chee Wai has created a simple, symmetrical set with the clean lines of the government office/new apartment on one side balanced against the mother's cluttered, faded flat on the other. Jutting from the front of the stage is the grave, covered in mesh so that the corpse can be illuminated from within.
Behind and spreading above the rooms is a fig tree that forms the central metaphor.
The play, directed by Tracie Pang, deals with the speed of change in Singapore in the name of progress, but even the writer could not have foreseen the rapidity with which the boom turned to slump.
Tay said ``Boom'' was the result of a request to update her decade-old play. Maybe it's time for ``Plunge II.''
``Boom'' is at the DBS Arts Centre until Sept. 28. Information: +65-6348-5555.
Review by Adam Majendie
Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Ten years ago, Singaporean playwright Jean Tay wrote ``Plunge,'' about the effect the 1997 financial crisis had on ordinary people. Yesterday, as the city's stock market dipped to a two-year low, her new play opened. It's called ``Boom.''
The play was inspired by a real-estate bubble in the country that prompted a frenzy of demolition to build blocks of new (and almost invariably smaller) apartments. Between the time it was conceived last year and the opening night, things have clearly changed.
``What a difference a year makes,'' wrote Tay in the program notes. A year? Try a week.
Tay's play is funny, clever, and even a couple of months ago was spot on in its examination of Singaporeans' obsession with the soaring real estate market, the key generator of personal wealth on an island where every square inch is zoned and precious.
It tells the story of property agent Ah Beng (Sebastian Tan), who is trying to persuade his mother (Fanny Kee) to sell her old crumbling apartment so they can move to a modern block. At the same time, civil servant Jeremiah (Chua Enlai) is facing the knotty problem of explaining to a corpse that it must be exhumed and cremated because there is no longer room on the island for the dead.
(Since 1998, the government has restricted the burial period to 15 years so that there's room in the cemeteries for fresh corpses.)
Connected Stories
The two strands are connected and Tay draws the parallel between the forced eviction of the mother -- developers in Singapore can buy and demolish an old block if they can get 80 percent of the residents to agree -- and the forced exhumation of the dead body.
The corpse (Zachary Ho) has the show-stealing part and most of the best lines -- ``I want to be covered with maggots'' is hard to beat for a start. Yet the most moving performance is Kee's, struggling to hang on to her past, her hopes and her apartment.
Wong Chee Wai has created a simple, symmetrical set with the clean lines of the government office/new apartment on one side balanced against the mother's cluttered, faded flat on the other. Jutting from the front of the stage is the grave, covered in mesh so that the corpse can be illuminated from within.
Behind and spreading above the rooms is a fig tree that forms the central metaphor.
The play, directed by Tracie Pang, deals with the speed of change in Singapore in the name of progress, but even the writer could not have foreseen the rapidity with which the boom turned to slump.
Tay said ``Boom'' was the result of a request to update her decade-old play. Maybe it's time for ``Plunge II.''
``Boom'' is at the DBS Arts Centre until Sept. 28. Information: +65-6348-5555.
