“An Intimate Affair”

Reviewer: Lee Shu Yu
Performance: 7 September 2019

Ask anyone for the title of an iconic Singaporean play and you are likely to hear “Emily of Emerald Hill” – with good reason. The searing monodrama was written by Stella Kon in 1982, and tells of the trials and glories of the Peranakan matriarch Emily Gan. It has been performed more than 500 times across Singapore, Malaysia, Beijing and even Mumbai.

There’s simply no other play fit for the grand opening of Wild Rice’s new theatre at Funan Mall. But what awaited me was a riotous and chaotic first act.

This production, directed by Glen Goei, takes full advantage of the intimate thrust stage. With everyone sitting close together, Heng easily calls latecomers up on stage to tease, and singles out front-row audience members to interrogate as one of Emily’s servants.

Kon’s play requires the audience to keep up with Emily’s various personalities – tender, showy and everything in between – and the meandering chronology of events. And Wild Rice’s liberal additions of audience interaction ends up further confusing the voice of Emily.

While it is thrilling and comical when an audience member is caught off-guard, Heng’s constant breaking off from the text becomes jarring to the overall flow of Emily’s story. I find myself being distracted by his own larger-than-life persona and having to deal with too much added banter. It takes me a while to get used to the fact that I am not watching a one-woman drama, but something closer to a stand-up act involving an audience ensemble.

In a sequence where Emily reveals, through various interactions with her family, just how controlling and demanding she can be, Heng deliberately propels through the montage with added flourishes, never stopping to catch a breath. The feat yields thunderous applause and cat calls, but it feels like such glee is misplaced. In between Heng lifting up Emily’s voice and drowning it with frolics, I wonder if this play could have been titled Ivan Heng of Funan Mall instead.

Yet, for such a no-holds-barred production, its design elements are surprisingly conservative. Set design by Wong Chee Wai is uninspiring; Emily’s web of control over the home is literally conveyed by strings that go across the hulking, white façade of the house. Sound design by Paul Searles is mostly functional, coming on as predictable cues for Emily but very little else.

Thankfully, as Emily grows older, Heng too pulls back. Where he shows little to no restraint in the first half, the second half of the play finally gives us some breathing room as he flaunts his versatility. This is where Heng shows he is no one-trick pony, but a force to be reckoned with when it comes to playing the icon that he has made his own.

And while Heng’s Emily is not for everyone, the endless guffaws from the audience signal that a campy and unexpected performer can indeed refresh an old text.

Alas, one last thing pricks at my experience of the play.

In the first act, amidst the playfulness, Heng confiscates a mobile phone from an audience member trying to video-record his performance. But then, during Emily’s most powerful speech, another person’s mobile phone starts to ring. Some of the audience even laugh in anticipation of what Heng would do. Disgruntled, he momentarily snaps out of character to chide the culprit into silencing their still-buzzing phone.

His recovery from the disruption is seamless and poised, but these incidents nonetheless beget the question: Wild Rice might be ready to get intimate with audiences, but are our audiences ready to be held accountable for their actions?

 

“An understated Emily”

Reviewer: Meera Nair
Performance: 16 July 2016

Emily of Emerald Hill gets the nomadic treatment in Desert Wine’s production as it roams from non-traditional venues like community centres to traditional venues like Goodman Arts Centre. While each venue will bring with it a different experience, the one constant is the performance.

It is reassuring that the high point of this production is Laura Kee’s performance as Emily. Despite being much too young for the role, she still manages to convince us that she has lived far more than her years. Emily experiences success, loss, grief, and even humiliation. Yet she remains logical and focused at times of crisis, for instance, being a good wife in the face of her husband’s infidelity so that she would, in the eyes of society, remain blameless.

In performing this role, Kee demonstrates a familiarity with the Peranakan culture that is at the core of Emily Gan. She switches effortlessly between English, Malay and Hokkein, and exhibits the body language befitting of a woman who has the grace of a traditional Peranakan woman. She is tireless as the perfect host and narrator, attending to each and every guest and making everyone (including us) feel welcome. Throughout her performance, Kee makes good use of the stage’s space, despite the set occupying a relatively small portion of it. In fact, the set is not at all as stripped down as promised. While there are no elaborate sets or lighting and multimedia enhancements, the stage still contains two wicker chairs, a wooden screen, and table with smaller items like a telephone and glasses, making for a decent set.

The Emily that Kee creates is a woman of quiet determination. She manipulates through emotional blackmail and tries to control much of what goes on around her, but her character is neither loud nor showy. Visually, Emily’s sarong kebaya is the only indicator of her Peranakan heritage; she wears no jewellery and her hair is done up in a simple bun. Her clothes are in shades of red – while bright, they do not scream for attention.

We may hate Emily for the way she exploits the people around her to achieve her own ends. Yet as we witness her story unfolding and her subsequent fall from grace, we begin to truly appreciate her fortitude in making the best of her circumstances through the only means available to her. This Emily may not be the loud, over-bearing Peranakan matriarch that we have come to imagine, but she is just as powerful in an understated way.

As a monologue, Emily of Emerald Hill is perhaps easier to manage for a nomadic performance. Given that this is the first of a series of productions that Desert Wine’s Comfort Theatre aims to stage in the heartlands, it would be interesting to see if strong performances can be coaxed out of ensembles as this would add more variability to each performance.

“A classic Singapore story in the heartlands”

Reviewer: Alisa Maya Ravindran
Performance: 25 June 2016

Desert Wine’s production of Stella Con’s classic, Emily of Emerald Hill, brings theatre right into of the heartlands. The showing is at the Bukit Panjang Community Centre, with a small stage and intimate crowd. This monodrama stars Laura Kee as Emily, and as an actor she is young. Despite her age, she plays the role of a gossipy, power-hungry nonya convincingly. Emily’s journey at first seems like a classic rags-to-riches tale, but in the end is a tale of desperation, loss and family.  Emily is an enigmatic figure and until the end, one never knows for sure if she understands that her overbearing nature is what pushes all her family away from her. Kee sustains the audience’s attention throughout the one-woman show with her spot-on mannerisms and speech patterns that animates her character. Kee also pulls off the code-switching well. The disparity in the way that Emily addresses foreigners and society people and her servants is comedic. Yet, it is also a poignant reminder of class differences, and how easy it is for one to forget their humbler beginnings.

In the final analysis, Desert Wine’s rendition of Emily of Emerald Hill is an apt choice for a theatre production in the heartlands, as it addresses concerns central to the development of Singapore. Emily’s is a story that is quintessentially Singaporean; it is about dreams, ambition, family and struggling to figure out how they all work together. Despite the simple set and less-than-spectacular lights and sounds, Kee’s performance remains impressive.

“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.

“A patchwork of love”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 3 April 2015, 3pm

Flipping through the archives of Flying Inkpot, I came across a review of Emily of Emerald Hill staged by Wild Rice in 2001. The author lamented that he was then watching it for the first time, suggesting that it was a play worth repeated-watching. 14 years on, I would lament the same for myself. Stella Kon’s Emily has won first prize in the Singapore National Playwriting competition but was pronounced to be too difficult a play-script – given that it is a monodrama of 2 hours. So it was not until 1984, that Malaysian director Chin San Sooi took up the challenge and directed Leow Puay Tin to perform for the Malaysian audience. The debut gave rise to Chin’s founding of the Five Arts Centre. In the following year, Emily finally debuted in Singapore during the Singapore Drama Festival, directed by Max Le Blond where Margaret Chan breathed life into Emily, which was to become an icon in the history of our English-language theatre. Emily‘s next phenomenal milestone would be in the year 2000 when Ivan Heng redefined Emily in his crossover rendition, directed by Krishen Jit, inaugurating W!ld Rice Productions. For such a phenomenal play script, it is to my dismay that I am only watching it for the first time in my late twenties. It is, however, heartening to see many young children, accompanied by their parents, in the audience today, how lucky of them, I thought.

Stella Kon’s Emily is indeed demanding. It is a monodrama showcasing only the presence of one speaking performer while the audience collaborates in creating the other characters in their minds. In this iteration of Emily, Karen Tan is Emily Gan. She drives the play and its plot forward while navigating the audiences through the trials and tribulations of her life.

Aidli ‘Alin’ Mosbit’s Emily seems to place more emphasis to the theme ‘family’. Given the minimalistic stage design, she has chosen a thrust stage made up of several hexagonal platforms that resonates with the play’s thematic prop – the patchwork quilt.

What does it take to keep a family together? As the sun sets on Emily’s life, she accomplishes one last favor, incognito, for her good friend, Bee Choo. Then, she is left to her own devices in the grand house on Emerald Hill. In the end, she wins the battle against her husband’s mistress but is turned away at his deathbed; she coerces her first-born to give up his horse-riding dream to return to his law degree, only to receive news of his suicide later. Ironically, in order not to alienate and lose her daughter, Emily relents to her settling down in America. The feel of Emily reminds me of The Great Gatsby – the grand parties, the intrigues, the secrets. But after all the grand parties, intrigues and revelations, what is left for her? Karen Tan plays the resilience and fragility of a woman with great equanimity, revealing the irony that it is her fragility and fear of abandonment that drives her to seize power which ultimately drives her loved ones away.

The magic of Stella Kon’s writing lies in the way she managed to weave nuances of the Peranakan heritage with bits and pieces of the society’s progress into the context of Emily’s dialogues. This gives the director a lot of room to explore other themes embedded in the story, while still preserving the heritage elements to offer the audience a glimpse of the past.