Singapore

Ian C. Nelson is librarian emeritus and former assistant director of
libraries at the University of Saskatchewan Library. He is also
dramaturge for the Festival de la Dramaturgie des Prairies.

John Palmer, a cofounder of the Toronto Free Theatre and the Playwrights
Union of Canada, teaches playwriting at the National Theatre School of
Canada. He has international directing credits and a prolific output of
plays produced in alternative theatres.

Singapore bears the classic hallmarks of sex farce: a tight web of
characters (each with at least one peculiar obsession), manipulative
agendas of declared rivals, secret plots and alliances, varying states
of undress, dizzying pace, and a lot of doors and stairways. Several
scenes rise to the level of signature pieces for the genre. One such
scene has a confused elderly father about to get remarried attempting to
change from running shoes into dress shoes for a fast-tracked wedding
with his gold-digging fiancée; his gay son and ex-wife join the melee
in this scene of pure comic mayhem. Palmer is likewise adept at
exploiting the comic potential of offbeat telephone conversations; for
example, two marital rivals simultaneously call a rich doctor (read:
their next victim) on cellphones and deal with being put on hold.

These qualities noted, Singapore reads much like a rough draft of
post–Joe Orton or post–George Walker material. There are too many
abrupt and disorienting changes of thought and conversational direction;
farce is a genre that requires at least a sense of consistency, however
bizarre. Palmer, like the two aforementioned masters, does not eschew
sexuality or graphic language in his work. This is a good play for
alternative theatre. It has a raucous hyperactivity and edginess that
would lend itself to the kind of short television films that are
currently advertised as “without borders.”