Theatre Review: — Can Change by Zafar Anjum (S’pore)

Watching The Necessary Stage’s “– Can Change”, the opening play of M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2010, this reviewer was not sure if the play was to be taken at its face value or one was expected to interpret the whole thing as a lampooning exercise.

When the play ended, the audience had a chance to ask this to the playwright Haresh Sharma and director Alvin Tan. The duo cleared the air. The play was open to interpretation by the audience—so if the viewer wanted to bring his own sense of irony to the play, that was fine with them. I asked a Singapore lady her reaction after the play ended. She said she took the play as it was, sparing it of any added irony.

So, what happens in the play? The dash in “– Can Change” signifies that anyone can change. Isn’t that profound? Wait, there is more. This optimistic wisdom, “– Can Change”, is illustrated by three separate cases: Singles Can Change, Homosexuals Can Change and Marxists Can Change.

Siti Khalijah shines in the first part: she plays the role of a single Singaporean girl who does not want to get married and settle down in life. He aunt is at her wits end. She can’t convince the girl that she should find a man for herself before it is too late; that she should have the experience of being a complete woman. The aunt, played by Nora Samosir, is the living example of a wasted life—for her career, she neglected her family life. She rues that she missed the opportunity when there was time for her to settle down. She did not want her niece to repeat her mistake. Enter the state-funded dating agencies. After some struggle, Khalijah finds her man. After marriage, the next pressure she faces is to have babies. After her initial resistance, she gives in to her husband’s and aunt’s demand who argue that it is her moral and national duty to give birth to babies (Singapore’s birth rate is falling every year).

The same method is used showing a young gay man changing his orientation for society’s sake. Rodney Oliveiro and Chua Enlai play the role of gay men fantastically and with great emotion.

The third part is about the playwright Sharma and director Tan—fiction finally meeting fact. Through newspaper clippings and graphic slides, they share their personal experience of once being branded as Marxists by a local paper and how the episode led them to despair. As a result, they changed tack, worked with the local community and performed in schools. Recognition came to them from the government and from the same newspaper that once suspected them to be Marxists.

The beauty of this production was its simplicity and interactivity. Clearly, Haresh and Tan wanted to point out the need for individual change that is required for Singapore to survive as a healthy and thriving nation. But this coming from The Necessary Stage made it look almost like a satire. Sometimes complex things can be said in a simple way and yet they can be interpreted by people in complex ways. I don’t know how to deal with that.

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