LOVE LETTERS by Nelson Chia and Mia Chee

“Man and woman, in translation”

Reviewer: Idelle Yee
Performance: 23 February 2019

Two desks are placed on either end of the stage; a man and a woman sit in front of each desk, writing, thinking, pondering. An odd assemblage of various household items sits centrestage: wooden racks, some table lamps, and various artefacts of domesticity: a night light, a scarf, and assorted items of clothing.

Then both man and woman drag their chairs downstage, and sit down once more, this time in a posture of address to the audience. The sounds of bossa nova-esque guitar fill the theatre. The play begins.

First premiered in 1988 in America, A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters employs the epistolary form to explore the relationship between a man and a woman through a lifetime of correspondence. It leads us through the childhood banter, the early awakenings of attraction, the gradual distancing of adulthood, and the slow burn into a desperate, adulterous affair.

In this translated production, staged at the Esplanade’s 2019 Huayi Festival, the exploration of what is said – or rather, written – and unsaid between man and woman is filtered through the linguistic pulsations of Mandarin (with smatterings of English). At the same time, it retains the original characters’ participation in specifically American customs such as dance classes and school proms. This duality results in an interestingly nuanced positionality, with respect to both Gurney’s play and to this production’s largely Singaporean-Chinese audience. It can perhaps be read as a Chinese-American immigrant take on the tale, but Singaporean actors and real-life married couple Nelson Chia and Mia Chee speak with an unmistakably Singaporean accent.

This Mandarin adaptation results in some thoroughly enjoyable moments of shared lightheartedness, particularly in the characters’ more youthful exchanges. Of special note is the moment when Chia’s Zhang Xin Nan (based off the original play’s Andrew Makepeace Ladd III), suddenly shouts “Sex!” in English, invoking a titter of childish glee amongst the audience. Parts of the translated dialogue recall 相生 (xiangsheng) performances in the delivery of rapid-fire banter; the two actors’ chemistry is an illumination as they interrupt, cut each other off, and coax out replies from the displeased or otherwise unenthused addressee.

Ultimately, though, the staging of an Anglophone play in a non-Anglophone language could perhaps afford to further explore immigrant narratives or diaspora culture. This translated production, which remains faithful to the original text, does not attempt to do so; this is a loss. Nonetheless, it still conveys the script’s emotional potency through the intimacy of what might be, to many, still the language of the heart.