EMILY OF EMERALD HILL by Esplanade’s The Studios: fifty

“Enigmatic Emily”

Reviewer: Andre Theng
Performance: 4 April 2015, 3pm

I should begin with a disclaimer: I love Emily. Even though this is the first time I am watching Emily on stage, I have already fallen in love with her in my imagination based on the script I have read and re-read for theatre classes and academic papers. Here is one play that is perhaps as Singaporean as it gets – complete with some serious code-switching, and truly offering a window into a particular culture and at a particular time period in Singapore history. All this is told through the eyes of a woman so full of contradictions, a character so strong yet so weak, submissive but also complicit in perpetuating the same injustices she suffered.

So I am glad that The Esplanade has decided to re-stage Emily as part of its SG50 series. As Corrie Tan of The Straits Times noted, it is difficult to reinterpret a play that has been staged and re-staged so many times in many different productions including those overseas. While I have never watched Emily on stage before, I have some experience of them from watching clips online of previous productions. The main difference in this production is the thrust stage, featuring the iconic chair and rotary telephone, as well as plain white steps in the background. I find the blocking rather bizarre at times – Emily frequently turns her back to the audience to face the black wall on the other end. I feel that it could have done with less movement up and down the stage (which is something like a catwalk) overall.

Karen Tan is a competent Emily, bringing out the multiplicity of emotions and she succeeds in presenting that tentativeness within Emily. Emily is always on the run, almost as if she’s talking to multiple people at the same time. She has busied herself with her duties as wife and mother. But towards the end of the play, in a rather poignant moment, we get a glimpse of what drives her: how she had grown up believing that being a dutiful wife and mother is her sole purpose in life. This bit, to me the climax of the play, is a let-down because Tan narrates it sitting in far corner of the stage, speaking softly and drenched in blue light. It can easily go unnoticed to someone not anticipating this moment. I also think that Tan’s code-switching could have been more marked; it is only most apparent at the market scene and was not too obvious in the opening scene. Credit must be given as Tan shone when she came out in the final scenes as a much-older Emily, reflective on her life and almost senile.

I do not think that this was Emily’s best outing yet. But this production does not take away Emily’s enigma, and to me, that is enough. Although written 30 years ago, she continues to endure and endear as the Singapore ‘bibik’ and from the looks of it, will be around for years to come.