Golden Blood

Merlynn Tong’s play opens a fascinating window on the underbelly of Singapore’s glossy high capitalism with cultural traditions buried by the social imperative to get rich.

Tong and Charles Wu play estranged siblings standing in an apartment cleared out after the suicide of their mother.  With their father long dead, the innocent 14-year-old Girl and the Boy, 21 and proudly in a criminal drug gang, face being orphans and, worse in Singapore, being poor.

Their complex dynamic over the next seven years is beautifully etched by Tong’s writing, as is their veneration of gold and the West, albeit balanced with awkward attempts to follow old customs, icons and Mandarin proverbs.  They burn currency to help Mum survive in the other world, but its Monopoly money; Boy glorifies his huge, Malaysian gem-encrusted knife; Girl is never without her toy koala – she longs to be a vet in freedom-loving Australia. 

Merlynn Tong excels playing the Girl’s emergence into a rational but searching young business woman; and Charles Wu is outstanding as the impulsive Boy when at his most vulnerable, as his Ponzi scheme is collapsing, the gang are at the door and he finally holds tight to his sister.  Wu’s comic timing is also masterful, both actors so easy with this culturally insightful text warmed with so much humour.

Its darker themes of alienation, trust and abandonment, class and soulless greed never swamps the authentic intimacy built up by these two actors. With director Tessa Leong, they together premiered Golden Blood two years ago at Griffin Theatre. The language while a type of Singlish is perfectly accented and accessible. 

It’s fantastic that a wider audience (and Melbourne) can now see through this window to a world new to the Australian stage.  Oddly though Leong and the actors don’t quite fill out this larger Wharf stage or Michael Hankin’s stark set. The play lags midway through its 90 minute sequence of short scenes but by end Golden Blood is a moving, revelatory and even profound new work.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Prudence Upton