The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ

In lieu of the upcoming re-run of last year's sold out play at the Singapore Theatre Festival, THE CAMPAIGN TO CONFER THE PUBLIC SERVICE STAR ON JBJ, which begins its 3-week run at the Drama Centre, National Library, on the 19th Sept (through to 7 Oct), I thought I'd help W!ld Rice publicise (I don't earn any commission) and potentially help my blog-ders get discounted tickets. I don't know how ticket sales are like as of now, but inside info has it that Circle 2 is closed throughout, meaning only the upper category-priced seats are available. I can understand why dressing the house is important, along with preventing patrons buying low-tier tickets in the hope to be upgraded down to the stalls.

So anyway...you can read all about the play at the click of the link above, but having seen it last year, twice, I dare say Pam Oei's stellar performance with co-star Rodney Oliverio makes it all the more worthwhile to catch, even if you haven't been supporting local theatre. Even for someone not very familiar with the real-life JBJ and Singapore's tricky political landscape, this play sets the tone for a good laugh before a cheeky poke at the Civil Service governings.

To watch Pam play the reel-life character Clara Tang, a rising star in the Civil Service, alone is not enough. Her multiple personalities in some scenes include a wide host of accents, poised to tickle you in every way, especially when she puts on a tudung (Malay for headscarf). Her uncanny resemblance to your everyday Singaporean undergraduate/woman in the office is striking, and prompts you to question if there's anything she cannot play. In scene 6 of Act 2, the heroine threads a thin line between a fallen youth and the ways of the elder_ly, and if you haven't gotten a sense of playwright Eleanor Wong's political innuendo by then, you should wonder where you have been some (if not all) of these 42 years.

By and large, this re-run deserves a sold-out performance (at least on weekends) to a select group of theatre go-ers, since not everyone may enjoy/understand the entire script. Yet Ivan Heng has done it again in pulling the right strings, to raise the bar for local theatre. Kudos to that!