THE MYSTERIOUS LAI TECK by Ho Tzu Nyen

“The air is a vast library of books”

Reviewer: Edward Eng
Performance: 17 May 2019

Theatre loves history because it is a fuel with which all memories are made from.

Artist Ho Tzu Nyen knows this, as the eponymous character in his new work, The Mysterious Lai Teck, booms over and over: “I am the shadow of Ho Chi Minh”, each claim becoming more insistent and obsessed. But as the man loses control of power with his receding youth and the increasing number of attacks on the Malayan anti-colonialists – he is leader of the Malayan Communist Party – his voice leaks mortality salience and becomes much more pensive. The history play turns into an anxious tone poem.

It’s a slow-burner that starts with a bit of visual trickery: an infinite number of projected ‘curtains’ are drawn while the physical curtain stays closed. Eventually we catch our first glimpses of a man in the wispy light. Lai Teck, probably, although he goes by other names like Chang Hung and Mr. Wright.

Then the curtain falls away. The second and third segments further expose him while the technical wizardry focuses a single wall of light and sound that crystallises his voice. The real Lai Teck is just behind it, and he begins to narrates his exploits through the years. For all the exaggerations of his journey through colonial Indochina, the Malay peninsula and finally Singapore, it is certain that there is a real man. Lai Teck tells us, through unofficial biographers (policemen, party activists, other agents of power), that he has lived various narratives as a spy and traitor. He is a man who has led a full life.

Then comes a twist, that the ‘real’ onstage Lai Teck is completely animatronic, literally larger-than-life with his puppet-like proportions. The house lights come on suddenly, revealing that there is not even a puppeteer behind the whole thing. Everything about Lai Teck is fiction.

The Mysterious Lai Teck works well because accounts of the reconstituted Lai Teck are historically odd, and yet extremely familiar in tone. One young fellow audience member, who told me that this is one of the first few things he has watched in a theatre, observed: “It’s about the fake news bill!” I agreed, thinking about the atmosphere of distrust created by the recent Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation (POFMA) bill. Even the internet as the bogeyman is reflected in the animatronic Lai Teck.

My main gripe with The Mysterious Lai Teck is the performance-as-product framing. The one-hour runtime feels too long, and the theatre, too big. It is a rendering of the Southeast Asian psyche, bringing together climate, politicking and human strife amidst our gentle but changing landscape. The Mysterious Lai Teck is just too delicate to fit into the fashionable programme booklet.