By Merlynn Tong
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Drama
It’s the Opening Night: Seventh Night of Chinese New Year (AKA Human Day) Extravaganza at the Money Money Karaoke Bar.
But the mood is sombre.
Karaoke bar entrepreneur, Mandy (Merlynn Tong), is curled up on a podium. Her despair is palpable. Her boyfriend, Xavier (Zac Boulton), is doing his best to lift her mood, but his quirky, Aussie humour is falling flat.
Nobody has come. After all their preparation and all their hopes, the opening night extravaganza is a fizzer.
Yet in her despondency, Mandy decides to sing. And that’s when the supernatural intrigue begins.
Two women (Kimie Tsukakoshi and Seong Hui Xuan) suddenly appear in the karaoke bar. Are they customers? Are they even real? And, despite being hungry, why can’t they eat the food Xavier offers them?
By the end of this comedic horror story, Mandy will confront the destiny her forebears created for her and find her own richness on a different path.
Photo Credit – STC / Prudence Upton
The Marvellous Merlynn Tong
I’ve seen Ms Tong before and I think she’s a supreme talent.
I last saw Tong in another play she wrote and starred in: Golden Blood. Before that, she caught my eye in a support role in The Poison of Polygamy.
In Congratulations, Get Rich, Tong delivers a nuanced story which deftly mixes off-beat south-east Asian humour with centuries-old Chinese superstitions; a story which may seem superficial on the surface, but which explores a very personal question over whether the protagonist’s life is pre-destined to follow the same precipitous path on which her female forebears stumbled. Or can she break the cycle and enjoy the rich life her mother and grandmother were denied?
Photo Credit – STC / Prudence Upton
As an actor, Tong uses all of her face and all of her body to convey her character’s emotions. One minute she’s performing a geeky dance and the next she’s literally trembling with fright as her mysterious visitors appear from the ether. In one scene, she responds to her boyfriend’s complaint that she never responds to his (stupid) jokes by offering exaggerated, confected joviality. In the another she grimaces as the elder of the two visitors divines from her facial structure whether she will enjoy good fortune.
Congratulations, Get Rich boasts strong performances which were authentic to the culture they represented. But there was no doubt, at least in my eyes, that Merlynn Tong was the star of the show.
Photo Credit – STC / Prudence Upton
What My Eyebrows Told Me
Congratulations, Get Rich is a good story, well told. Whilst not strictly auto-biographical, the story directly confronts Merlynn Tong’s relationship with the early loss of her mother in real life. Recognising that fact gives the narrative deep pathos and caused by eyebrows to rise into a fixed High Arch.
For more information on Congratulations, Get Rich!
Leave a comment