THE GOOD FARMER by TheatreWorks

“The Good Farmer“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 15 March 2018

This staging of Christopher Chee’s The Good Farmer – the winning script from TheatreWorks’ annual 24-Hour Playwriting Competition – is part of TheatreWorks’ Writing & Community programme. This programme seeks to develop writers from within the community, and to bring their work back to the community to inspire discussion about social issues – undoubtedly worthy goals. Unfortunately, while this performance does fulfil them to a basic extent, I cannot help feeling like I am watching a secondary school performance, and thinking that the community deserves better.

The stilted and awkward language betrays the rawness of the work from the get go. The Good Farmer begins with a naughty joke, which would have been an interesting way to open a play had it not carried on for several lines too long. Language aside, I am also befuddled by several implausible plot developments, for instance the complete disappearance overseas of Joseph Teo, a Public Service Commission scholar who has decided to break his bond. Even granting the possibility of him successfully evading the contact of family and friends, it is hard to believe that the state could not have tracked him down within a few days.

Given the title, references to farming seem rather arbitrary. Besides several direct mentions of the biblical story of Cain and Abel in the dialogue, and the decisions of the brothers Joseph and later Jacob, as well as their father, to go into (literal) farming, I am not sure how the idea of farming is being treated in a meaningful or nuanced way.

It makes me wonder to what extent opportunities were given for it to be revised and tested before this public showing.

Perhaps most curious is the decision to stage a segment near the end, where the two actors address the audience as narrators rather than characters. This is done in a style that is reminiscent of Chinese opera, complete with stylised movements and sound effects. This comes across as extremely disjunctive, as it is the only time such a break occurs in a play that is otherwise staged very realistically.

This realistic staging itself is an aspect I question, given the obvious limitations of the venue – the Mountbatten Community Club Performance Centre – which is not a professional theatre venue. This results in scene and lighting transitions that appear awkwardly amateur, for example having a stagehand walk on and offstage multiple times to change the props, contributing to the “secondary school play” vibe.

This is not to dismiss the worth of the project itself. The efforts of a professional theatre company to seek out new writers, stage performances in less typical venues, and reach more varied audiences, are certainly positive steps. However, moving forward, it would be more encouraging to see steps taken towards ensuring that these audiences are able to experience performances of a quality no different from what would be expected of any professional theatre performance.