Dear Nora | 2.5/5

SINGAPORE — Amateur theatre group Our Company sure aims high. Its follow-up to last year’s twin-bill show — Ovidia Yu’s Hokkien Me and Leow Puay Tin’s Three Children — is a brand new Singapore adaptation of the Ibsen classic A Doll’s House.

The tale of debt, deception and couple dynamics makes perfect sense in the Singapore setting, seen here as the story of Nora and Thomas Huang, a young, upwardly mobile couple moving into a new home.

Unbeknownst to Thomas, his success was built on shaky ground — Nora had secretly borrowed money that she used to help him complete his degree and it has come back to haunt her. With its corporate undertones and MBAs, and therapy sessions with a shrink, it’s oh-so upper middle class. But it also feels very relevant in the context of Singapore’s brutal rat race.

Playwright Michelle Tan “localises” Ibsen’s play admirably. With some pretty sharp writing, she makes it her own as her witty and snarky voice emerges. She and director Luke Kwek present the play as some kind of narrative “house” in flux, the story going back and forth the original’s ending and the journey that led to it, and with clearly outlined symbolisms regarding the husband-and-wife’s act of renovating their flat.

Playing Nora, promising actress Ethel Yap does her notoriously complex character justice: A ditzy wannabe tai-tai who takes pottery classes, she shuffles from being irritating and charming, innocent and flirtatious, manipulative and helpless. You’re drawn to her performance — and that of Ellison Tan’s as well. As the straight-talking childhood friend Christine, she’s a no-nonsense counterpoint to Yap’s erratic Nora.

Unfortunately, there’s also another reason why the two women stand out. On opening night at least, the performances of their male counterparts leave much to be desired in what seems to be a glaring discrepancy in intensity. Or perhaps the boys just aren’t in the same zone, so to speak. Marlon Dance-Hooi, who plays the scheming blackmailer Niles Koh, and Andrew Mowatt as psychiatrist Dr Rank seem altogether out of sync with Yap and Tan’s more natural approach. And, ultimately, more should be expected of KS Yeo’s take on Thomas as the smug, condescending husband with a trophy wife he calls “hamster”. The wild emotional twists and turns of Nora is in need of a wall to run against but in the end, one can’t help but see her come across as a petulant brat — mainly because she’s confronted by someone who is actually meeker than her.

Still, you’ve got to give Our Company credit for its ambitions — it’s a “house” with solid foundations and one hopes its inhabitants would eventually settle in nicely.

Dear Nora runs until June 22, 8pm, Drama Centre Black Box. With 3pm matinees. Tickets at S$30 from Ticketmash.