Theatre review: Pintu Pagar

SINGAPORE — It is not every day you hear a question like “Will you be my lawyer?” and think of it as the strangest pick-up line or marriage proposal. But in the course of the romantic play Pintu Pagar, you will hear it often enough to think it could very well replace that infamously non-romantic line about buying HDB flats.

In playwright and director Desmond Sim’s production for the ongoing inaugural Peranakan Arts Festival (which is also presenting the musical comedy Bibiks Behind Bars, Kena Again!), a luckless Karen Tay (played by Kimberly Chan) would regularly ask her long-time neighbour Richard Lim (Nicholas Bloodworth) for some legal help. They have grown up together, have the hots for each other, but things just aren’t meant to be.

A love story spanning four decades, the two go through life like the two panels of a pintu pagar (the saloon door found in the entrances of Peranakan shophouses), which swing side by side but never touch. It is a cute metaphor for an intimate, casual little story, even if it seems to think it is bigger than it really is.

As we follow the not-quite lovebirds through the years, the constant revelations of tragic twists (ranging from a mentally unstable spouse to a sick child) pile up. These are good ingredients for a night of over-the-top melodrama, except that the accumulation felt like a matter of convenience to drive the plot than anything else. For one, despite the undercurrent of tension between the two protagonists’ families — the rich Tays and the not-so-rich Lims, both played by Nora Samosir and Henry Heng — the vibe is actually more neighbourly.

For sure, it is a tough ask for any young actor to emotionally age convincingly before our eyes. In spite of the odd moustache and wig, Bloodworth and Chan do their best, even as they mostly seem to be stuck in pining mode throughout the play. In her brief moments, it is Samosir’s portrayals of the mothers that proved most engaging: As the drunk, cherki-playing Mrs Tay, with glimpses of a truly tragic history, and as the calm mild-mannered Mrs Lim.

The Victoria Concert Hall venue, too, feels like a clumsy choice, albeit unavoidable as the festival’s Bibiks musical is concurrently being staged at the Victoria Theatre. Its classical concert-friendly acoustics resulted in dialogue that initially reverberated and distracted on opening night. Admittedly, the hall’s majestic pipe organ does make for a good backdrop and Sim symbolically weaves it into the story.

All these said, we would not completely close the doors on Pintu Pagar. There is something about this bittersweet story of chances not taken that could appeal to the romantic in all of us.

Pintu Pagar runs until Sunday at Victoria Concert Hall. Tickets from SISTIC. For more information on the Peranakan Arts Festival, visit http://www.peranakanfest.com/