A lingerie shop upsets men in Teater Ekamatra’s La Luna, adapted from Singapore’s Oscar entry

SINGAPORE – La Luna, Singapore’s 2025 entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, has been adapted for the Esplanade stage.

Urban interloper Hanie will once more open a lingerie shop to upend the fragile peace of a repressed village, incurring the wrath of village chief Tok Hassan.

Malay theatre company Teater Ekamatra stages this Esplanade commission for Pesta Raya – Malay Festival of Arts from April 16 to 19, headlined by show-business regular Munah Bagharib as wrecking ball Hanie, who inadvertently kick-starts a culture war.

The Malay dramedy, now on Netflix, was a Singapore-Malaysia co-production directed by Singaporean film-maker M. Raihan Halim. Its quiet reception here upon its release in 2023 was in contrast to criticism across the Causeway from conservative Malays upset over its portrayal of Islam and sex.

By general standards, however, it is an innocuous and not at all sordid Malay kampung tale and a rather sweet story of the importance of female spaces.

Munah – who watched the film two to three years ago on the recommendation of fellow cast member Siti Khalijah Zainal – was immediately attracted to the work for its evergreen topic. “A lot of the themes that were brought up are still very relevant and maybe even more difficult to talk about now. Comedy is the best way to ease into a difficult conversation.”

As Hanie, whose lingerie shop La Luna becomes a kind of bat signal for the community, Munah had the realisation that making change cannot be an individualistic enterprise.

“It helps to find a community and even small actions can start a larger conversation,” she says, before pivoting to a more contemporary mode of activism. “The things that you share online, if you stand by them and believe in them, then go ahead and do them. There will be pushback, but if it’s important, then the right people will find you and the right conversations will find you.”

Teater Ekamatra’s executive and artistic director Shaza Ishak first watched La Luna in London and was set on adapting it because of its nostalgic feel, coming through some of its exaggerated humour.

Though the characters’ arguments might feel passe to audiences in cosmopolitan Singapore today, people are unlikely to ever tire of this classic tug of war between liberalism and conservatism, she says.

“We just celebrated Hari Raya and there are still discussions around how far we’ve strayed from tradition, respecting elders, what the perfect life is supposed to be, maybe even modesty and religiosity.

“There will always be people who are more modern than the past generation. There will always be generational conflict and difference,” she says.

The Ekamatra team will not adapt the story faithfully. Playwright Ridhwan Saidi had previously worked with Ekamatra on Shakespeare remake Bangsawan Gemala Malam (2022) and 2024’s Bawang Putih Bawang Merah, a Nusantara counterpart to Cinderella.

For example, director Mohd Fared Jainal says, the setting will move from fictional Malay kampung Bras Basah to Singapore. “We can only talk about ourselves,” he adds.

Like the film, though, care has been taken to flesh out details of the other characters. The reactions that have surfaced across the spectrum will also be respected. Fared says of this delicate treading: “Religion is its core, but we are also trying to find ways to navigate around it such that it is not so blatant.”

In Ekamatra’s trademark blending of traditions, there will be song and dance.

In modern clothes with a dash of folksiness, the characters exist in a weird liminal time. “Nostalgia exists, but we also don’t want to make it all about that. There’s a certain technology present like handphones, but there are still elements of a kampung,” says Fared.

Sani Hussin, who plays antagonist Tok Hassan, watched Hong Kong cat-and-mouse thriller Infernal Affairs (2002) – starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Andy Lau – to try to embody the “stillness” of his alpha male character.

It is the antithesis to who he is. He says: “I like changes and would much rather go with the flow.” But does he like playing scary characters? “Yes.”

Book It/La Luna

Where: Singtel Waterfront Theatre, 8 Raffles Avenue
When: April 16 to 19, 8pm (Thursday and Friday), 3 and 8pm (Saturday), 3pm (Sunday)
Admission: From $50
Info: str.sg/Dikf