MOSAIC by Take Off Productions

“Not Child’s Play(ground)“

Reviewer: Walter Chan
Performance: 22 January 2015

Complex and compelling, Mosaic broods on a loss that becomes far bleaker than on first glance.

What does cultural memory mean to the young?

Playwright Joel Tan explores this question in Mosaic, a play revolves around a particular Ang Moh Kio playground shaped like a dragon (nostalgia junkies would know). In the short span of 70 minutes, we follow a series of encounters between four young adults, each grappling with their own sense of loss and memory.

Sharon (Julie Wee) and Hanis (Erwin Shah Ismail) are the oh-so-edgy twenty-something couple that every other twenty-something has heard of, but never actually met. From bumming around secret smoking spots in school, to camping out overnight at a soon-to-be-demolished playground as a sign of protest, they epitomize the typical teenage bad-ass: rebels without a cause. Wong (Yap Yikai) is Sharon’s best friend, completes the love triangle, and surprise surprise, performs in a band. Rong Cheng (John Cheah) is the stranger that provides a foil to Sharon’s shenanigans, but is slowly revealed to have a past with the playground itself.

Tan’s writing is so startlingly honest that even though these characters seem rather exaggerated at times, their relationships with each other are indubitably genuine. More than just a post-ironic celebration of nostalgia (especially in the orgiastic throes of SG50 frenzy), Mosaic probes deep into the heart of teenage relationships, exposing the insecurities of Singapore’s younger generation.

Another point that deserves a mention is the dialogue, which is uproariously funny from start to finish. In fact, in a marked departure from the norm, the humor is anything but restrained: vacillating from snarkily bitchy to downright childish. Amidst the flurry of F-bombs in the performance, there lies an earnestness to each character’s quest of self-discovery that cannot be easily denied.

In addition, the cast of four delivers an exceptionally scintillating performance. The chemistry between the actors is evident even in the smallest of details, from interrupting each other’s dialogue to creating awkward silences between them. It must be said that their dynamism brought a desperate urgency to the script – a lesser cast may not have done the words justice beyond supercilious banter.

Credit too must be given to director Chen Yingxuan: Her decision to depict a deconstructed playground and have the actors mime their props not only echoed the threnodial undercurrents of the script, but also pointed to the amorphous nature of memory.

In all, Mosaic explored a different perspective of what and how we choose to remember. Like Tan himself said at the post-show dialogue, he did not intend for the play to offer the audience answers, but to make them question their obsession with the past.