REVIEW / THEATRE

I AM TRYING TO SAY SOMETHING TRUE

Esplanade Presents: The Studios

Esplanade Theatre Studio / Last Saturday

The play I Am Trying To Say Something True, which deliberates the difficulty of truth, could not have come at a better time.

It was performed at the Esplanade Theatre Studio last Saturday, in a time when so much discussion is swirling on the issue of fake news.

Its exploration, however, is of a different type of truth - personal truth - or rather, the travails of understanding, and speaking, one's inner humanity.

This is a tough one. After all, given how heated discussions involving external truth can be, how much harder then to reconcile people with the truths hidden and buried under layers of self-denial?

This monologue, performed by freelance theatre practitioner and educator Ellison Yuyang Tan, puts the character Risa, a 28-year-old who has lost her job, in dialogue with a psychiatrist.

With a sharp, tight script by writer and drama educator Michelle Tan, as well as clever direction from theatre veteran T. Sasitharan, the play showed strong symbolism, such as when Risa removes layer upon layer of outer clothing, hinting at the uncovering of a more original, authentic self.

In another segment, she recalls her experiences while walking around in circles onstage, as if to suggest that she does not know where she is heading in life.

The simple set - a plain backdrop with a couch, armchair and bicycle as the main props - also hints at an emptiness that engulfs and threatens to consume her, an unthinkably heartbreaking loss that she cannot articulate, let alone overcome.

Risa, as she readily admits herself, is a liar, although not in a law-breaking, scandalous sort of way. Rather, the mildness and highly relatable nature of her lies seems to suggest that everyone is a liar.

Her lies run the gamut of grandiose embellishments made to justify her own actions, to reflexive defensiveness that serve to solidify the mental block within.

There are also white lies, lies by omission or those that originate from a lack of courage to speak the truth.

The production delves into deep psychological tensions, but Michelle Tan's script has a lightness and optimism, with a dash of self-deprecating humour and razor-sharp sarcasm - which keeps Risa likable throughout.

Her lone attempt to speak the unspeakable is movingly admirable in its own quiet way.