Synopsis
Emily of Emerald Hill is a monodrama about the life of Emily Gan, a Peranakan matriarch who resides in a mansion on Emerald Hill. Emily talks about her life, from coming to Emerald Hill as a young bride in 1929, to raising her family and managing her home and social life in the 50’s and 60’s, to being a lonely elderly widow with modern Singapore coming up around her.
Artefacts from some of the past productions of Emily of Emerald Hill are available in The Repository.
First Stagings
Stella Kon first wrote Emily of Emerald Hill in 1982. With the play, she won the 1983 Singapore National Playwriting Competition – organised by the Ministry of Culture – for the third time. Kon had previously won the competition in 1977 with The Bridge and 1982 with The Trial. Up till Emily, Kon’s plays had not been staged in Singapore.
In an afterword to the published script of Emily, Krishen Jit quoted Kon as saying she was “Singapore’s greatest never-produced playwright”. Producers had claimed The Bridge and The Trial were unfeasible works because they had large casts (18 and 12 respectively). But even with just one actor, Kon found no one was willing to stage Emily in Singapore.
[W]ell, this one-woman-play format, it was very unseen in Singapore. You know that I didn’t invent the form, I’d seen one-person plays abroad, but it wasn’t known here. So the local directors, they asked[,] how can one person maintain the attention of the audience for that length of time. Konfrontation and konversion: Stella Kon gets her groove back by Richard Lord. In Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, 1(4), https://tinyurl.com/yclm8vun
Across the Causeway, however, was a different story as Kon’s works had been performed by Malaysian English drama groups in the 70’s. Emily first came to life on stage in a production by Malaysian theatre company Five Arts Centre. Directed by Chin San Sooi and performed by Leow Puay Tin, the monodrama was staged in November 1984 in Seremban and Kuala Lumpur.
Spurred on by the embarrassment of having an award-winning Singaporean play premiere elsewhere, the Singapore Ministry of Culture offered a $3,000 production grant for Emily to be staged in Singapore. The response was lukewarm:
Lim Kay Tong, a journalist and actor, had mulled over the possibility of staging it, but felt it would require ‘somebody quite remarkable’ to portray the role of Emily.
[…]Max Le Blond, a lecturer at the National University of Singapore and theatre director who has read parts of the play, finds it interesting, but feels he can’t spare the time to stage it at the moment.
“I would like to do it very much but I don’t see myself having the time until next year,” he says.
[…]Robert Yeo, a lecturer at the Institution of Education and chairman of the Culture Ministry’s Drama Advisory Committee has, meanwhile, been taking the play around, trying to interest people in the production.
But he has yet to get any confirmation from either an actress or a director.
Poor Emily will have to wait by Kannan Chandran. In Straits Times (6 December 1984), https://tinyurl.com/yc8nozyd
Theatre critic Kate Janes wrote a scathing response in the Straits Times:
The real scandal about English plays which are gathering dust in the Culture Ministry is this: One writer has won the first prize on three occasions and yet, not one of the plays has been performed in Singapore.
Neglect your art, neglect your soul. Artistes? Use them, or lose them. Stella Kon is at present living in Britain.
Come on Singapore, stand up for your own plays by Kate James. In Straits Times (30 December 1984), https://tinyurl.com/ybl2ubm2
In 1985, Emily finally came to the Singapore stage as a commission of the 1985 Singapore Drama Festival. Premiering on 4 September, the production was directed by Max Le Blond, and performed by actor Margaret Chan, who was seven months pregnant at the time with her second child.
Responses
To the 1984 Emily of Emerald Hill in Malaysia:
There was a minimum of stage effects, props and music. The lighting, I thought, could have been better. However, Puay Tin saved the show with her superb performance… In fact, all the other principals concerned – playwright Stella Kon, director Chin San Sooi and producer Su Ong Sok Cheng – deserve our congratulations.
One woman well worth watching by Chin Kee Onn. In Straits Times (6 December 1984).
To the 1985 Emily of Emerald Hill in Singapore:
By the time Margaret Chan had taken her second curtain call, the tears hadn’t yet dried on some faces though they were wreathed in smiles.
[…]While Leow Puay Tin who played the part of Emily in KL production, was more the nonya, Margaret plays Emily as the person who comes from the outside and controls the family.
Dr Kon said that while Puay Tin’s strength lay in making the transitions from little girl to society wife to doting grandmother, Margaret’s forte was in playing the matriarch.
Tears and smiles greet Emily by Rececca Chua. In Straits Times (6 September 1985), https://tinyurl.com/y8fqlts4
It was beyond stereotype, beyond caricature. Chan’s performance and Le Blond’s dramatic craft yielded a lucid character that was identifiably Singaporean, yet substantial enough to transcend the parochial.
A theatre groping for significance by Krishen Jit. In Straits Times (27 September 1985).
…intellectually and emotionally, it was weak. It did not delve into thoughts and feelings except on a superficial level. We do not come out with any real understanding of Emily.
…the play was also somewhat dissatisfying because of the compression of time. One lost a sense of time frame, especially in the second act.
Sheer indulgence in nostalgia by David Gabriel. In Straits Times (9 September 1985), https://tinyurl.com/ybtqnsxe
Some of the actors who have played Emily
Leow Puay Tin (1984, 1987, 2010)
Margaret Chan (1985, 1986, 2010)
Claire Wong (1989)
Pearlly Chan (1990, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016)
Jalyn Han (1991 , in Mandarin)
Ivan Heng (1999, 2000, 2011)
Neo Swee Lin (2010)
Brigitte Damiens (2015, in French)
Karen Tan (2015)
Further Reading
Classic Singapore plays #3 – Emily Of Emerald Hill by Corrie Tan. In Straits Times (26 August 2014).
Emily of Emerald Hill by Stella Kon. Constellation Books (2002).
Esplanade presents The Studios: fifty (2015).
By Gillian Ong and Daniel Teo
Published on 8 June 2018
