TORTOISE TALES by Chong Gua Khee and Tan Liting

“Tortoise Tales“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 6 September 2018

Staged as part of the Silver Arts festival, organised by the National Arts Council, Tortoise Tales presents a scenario that is at its core heartwarming and nostalgic. It is about the relationship between a grandmother and grandson, and how the stories told by the grandmother had an important influence on the grandson’s life as he grew up.

However, the piece feels under-developed, resulting in a lack of clarity about what it is trying to say or do. Over the course of the play, the characters relate several stories. And although the idea of stories and the questioning of them is emphasised in the synopsis, not much interrogation actually takes place.

An underlying issue with the work seems to be that it also tries to address the idea of cultural identity, but this is not fully developed or realised. For instance, there are a few references to Hakka culture, but it is not clear why this is an important detail for the creators, since the work is not otherwise framed as one that relates to this culture in particular.

Notably, the fable about the tortoise and the hare referenced in the title stands out because it is the only story related in the play that does not stem from Chinese folklore. Due in part to the inconsistency in the cultural contexts of the tales referenced, the fact that stories seem to play such a key role for the characters feels like a quirk of this particular family rather than something that stems from a deeper cultural source. It is thus difficult to interrogate the cultural value of stories, when the cultural framing of the play is itself unclear.

In the post-show dialogue, we learn that the initial inspiration for the work did indeed surround ideas of identity – specifically of being Hakka (both creators, Chong Gua Khee and Tan Liting, are Hakka), and also Singaporean Chinese. Possibly due to constraints of the festival, the play’s 45-minute duration is not sufficient to fully explore these complex issues.

While there are some humorous moments in the script, the development of the emotional trajectories of both characters is also problematic. The grown grandson’s pestering of his grandmother to tell him stories from his childhood, after not visiting her for a long time, is bewildering. We are not given enough hints (or not given them at the right points) that he is troubled by a bigger conflict, to explain or justify his behaviour. Similarly, the grandmother’s emotional journey is undeveloped; hence her display of emotion at the memory of her now-deceased husband is unconvincing.

Nevertheless, one very strong and engaging device is the use of hand shadow puppetry to mark flashbacks where the grandmother tells bedtime stories to her grandson. This effectively conjures up the nostalgia associated with childhood, and the innocence of the grandmother-grandson relationship. I certainly look forward to the future development of this work into a more focused and nuanced piece.