By Merlynn Tong
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Dramatic Premise
It’s 1990’s Singapore.
Girl (Merlynn Tong) is 14 years old. Boy (Charles Wu) is 21.
They hardly know each other. But following their mother’s sudden death, they’re suddenly orphans.
Boy agrees to become Girl’s guardian. Initially, they tip-toe around each other. But they seem to develop an understanding – a co-dependence, perhaps – across the seven-year period covered by the story.
Girl is a dreamer. She wants to move to Australia, become a vet and look after all the continent’s marsupials. Her favourite toy is a stuffed koala.
Boy is a bit of a dreamer too. But his dreams have a harder edge. He wants to get rich. And he’ll take any path open to him to fulfil his dreams. Soon, he becomes embedded in Singapore’s gang culture. He walks a tightrope between untold wealth and serious physical harm.
Golden Blood is the story of two troubled siblings. Do they truly love each other? Or did Boy agree to become Girl’s guardian as an opportunistic means to a nefarious end? Or can two things be true at the same time?
Photo Credit – STC / Prudence Upton
The Marvellous Ms Merlynn
I already knew Charles Wu from earlier STC productions such as The Lifespan of a Fact and The Importance of Being Earnest.
That the three characters I’ve now seen him play are so different is testament to what a terrific actor Wu is.
Photo Credit – STC / Prudence Upton
Charles Wu was already on my “must see” list.
Now Merlynn Tong joins him there!
She wrote the play. She played the main character. She was outstanding.
I had seen Tong before in The Poison of Polygamy, where she played the main character’s long-suffering wife. She did so with considerable dignity. I remember being impressed by her performance.
But Tong was a revelation in Golden Blood. She was convincing as an unsophisticated 14-year-old girl, whose life had been turned upside down by her mother’s death. She was equally convincing as a more mature twenty-something. My eyes were drawn to her throughout the play. I hung on her every word.
Photo Credit – STC / Prudence Upton
Authentic Story Telling
Golden Blood is a tribute to authentic storytelling.
I suppose a non-Singaporean (read white person) could have written a version of this story. But it would have been less than…much less than…
The story is elevated by the subtle interactions that only a Singaporean Chinese playwright, like Merlynn Tong, could conceive.
Each sibling claiming that their deceased mother told them the other was their favourite. The shame of not having a tertiary degree. The scheming to get rich. The romanticised view of migrating to somewhere like Australia.
Ghost month. Burning Monopoly money so the dearly departed can afford food in the afterlife. Filial piety. Sibling rivalry.
To say nothing of the sporadic, but strategic, planting of Singlish words and phrases, whether spoken in Hokkien, Malay or English.
Making the same point another way, my Malaysian-born wife was frequently heard to snigger in advance of the predominantly white audience and, in some cases, on her lonesome because few in the said predominantly white audience understood the joke. She tells me the swearing in Hokkien was deliciously filthy!
Photo Credit – STC / Prudence Upton
Which is not to say that the story is inaccessible to those who are not familiar with the South-East Asian experience. Whilst a Singaporean might find additional depth in the interplay between the characters, there is plenty in the storytelling to enthral any audience member, irrespective of their background, because the storytelling is authentic.
And authentic storytelling is the best storytelling.
Photo Credit – STC / Prudence Upton
What My Eyebrows Told Me
My eyebrows remained in a high arch throughout this intriguing story.
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