Theatre review: Singapore, Michigan a confident debut about adulting and privilege
Singapore, Michigan cast (from left) Zane Haney, Shrey Bhargava and Ching Shu Yi give real depth to their trio of characters on a road trip in search of the titular American town. PHOTO: PANGDEMONIUM
Singapore, Michigan
Pangdemonium
Lasalle College of the Arts – Singapore Airlines Theatre
June 28, 8pm
A Singaporean couple and their American classmate drive through a Michigan winter in pursuit of a silly quirk of history – an American ghost town called, perplexingly, Singapore.
Over a blustery weekend, the trio realise that the rest of their lives will not so much be a frivolous jaunt, but a series of calculated choices.
Playwright Ong Chong An's first professional script is an elegant snow globe of a road trip story. It is a finely crafted drama of young adulthood, as the trio, encased in a dingy motel, trade ghost stories, bad takeaway Chinese food and secrets.
Ong's talky script draws out the heightened emotional state that young adults on the cusp of graduation often feel, when every decision appears life-altering.
Carol's (Ching Shu Yi) parents own an oil corporation but she wants to work for a non-profit, which annoys her pragmatic boyfriend Manish (Shrey Bhargava), who is tied to a hefty scholarship bond. Jesse (Zane Haney), an English major who comes from money, sides with Carol, but antagonises Manish, who in turn rubs Jesse the wrong way when he calls America a Third World country.
Like three volatile elements dropped into a confined space, the trio's biographies and traits play off one another well. Class, gender, nationality and race come to inflect a slow-burn argument about responsibility and desire, choice and circumstance.
Under Timothy Koh's direction, the three characters are furnished with a complexity that allows them to be a goofy trio when together, then markedly different in their respective pairs when one steps out into the snow for air or, well, better Wi-Fi.
The actors give each of their not-quite-adult characters real depth – Janus-faced Jesse, micro-managing Manish and Carol, adrift between two worlds.
Fortunately, the destination of Singapore, Michigan, is kept to a lean five-minute exposition early on – so the ghost town does not become too overt an allegory for the play's themes. That restraint allows Singapore, Michigan, to be the blank canvas on which the characters project their disappointments and hopes.
Set designer Eucien Chia's set is as lovely to marvel at as a beautiful winter diorama. The drivable open-topped car prop is the mesmerising centrepiece of the opening winter drive scene and the alabaster forest landscape subtly suggested through what looks like a hand-painted curtain background. In the motel, a brilliant white blizzard at the window is rendered convincingly by light designer James Tan.
It is a well-paced story until the play's final act, which is bogged down by an inelegant excess of plot twists and abrupt revelations that try to tie up its complex threads too tightly. Its final act builds up too quickly and risks melodrama in an otherwise assuredly realistic direction.
Although equatorial heat is endemic to Singapore arts, winter has not been completely absent, and Ong's 'Singaporean students abroad' play has echoes of writer Carissa Foo's university road trip novel What We Learned From Driving In Winter (2022). It joins the likes of film-maker Anthony Chen's The Breaking Ice (2023) and writer Daryl Qilin Yam's Shantih Shantih Shantih (2021) in Singaporean depictions of winter.
More than a coming-of-age story, the play is also about growing up with the burden and allure of privilege, comfort and templates. Writ large, it interrogates a Singaporean brand of exceptionalism – heightened perhaps when one is young and abroad, beneficiary of an imperfect system, and certainly played up in the age of a more insular America.
Singapore, Michigan is a confident debut with substantial complexity. The snow falls differently each time you give the globe a little shake.
Book It/Singapore, Michigan
Where: Lasalle College of the Arts – Singapore Airlines Theatre, 1 McNally Street
When: Till July 11; Tuesdays to Fridays, 8pm; Saturdays and Sundays, 3 and 8pm
Admission: From $35
Info: str.sg/fGcD
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