Checkpoint Theatre’s Tender Submission is set to stand the test of time in its brilliantly complex depiction of a marriage weathered by it.
If you’ve been an avid follower of Checkpoint Theatre’s work, you’d know that Lucas Ho’s third full-length for the company, Tender Submission was supposed to premiere last year. After an unfortunate accident that led to a year-long postponement, it fortunately arrived (or returned) to the Drama Centre Black Box last week for its run — complete with all shows sold out — and proved that more often than not, the longer the wait, the sweeter and richer the result.
That’s not to say watching it last year would have yielded something less in experience. Fundamentally a play that revolves around the trials and tribulations of marriage in a Singaporean, upper-middle class, Christian household, having veteran actors and real-life couple Neo Swee Lin and Lim Kay Siu (or The NeoKeleLims on Twitch) portray this relationship is quite possibly the most powerful way to bring Ho’s script to life. The unforeseen blip this production went through has only made this casting choice more apt — having to weather through a real-life “storm” for a whole extra year has gifted them not only more time with the characters, but also what is perhaps a parallel experience to draw on when playing their characters Catherine and David.
It’s definitely not the easiest play to watch, even if it is crystal-clear why those who grew up or currently live in Singapore should watch it. It brilliantly negotiates the give-and-take of marriage with faith as a lens and material-source, the secular country it is hosted in an instant and effective soundboard of the brevity of its charges and proclamations.
Goes without saying that something like this requires a fair bit of audience participation (in the form of self-reflection) for maximum appreciation value, so if you were thinking of entering the theatre with a full conscience of emotional and mental baggage, prepare to leave the space feeling confused at best, if not drained.
But this is an important work for Singapore, nonetheless. The title “Tender Submission” cleverly encapsulates the myriad ways this play is able to speak directly to the concerns of the religious community, as it does to those beyond. The play begins as Catherine and David enter their church’s cry room for the outcome of a vote that Catherine has set into motion — a tender for more land to support the expansion of their community welfare services that she will be heading. The entire play happens in this brightly-coloured liminal space, a symbolic and literal site of transformation as it charts the growth of their own relationship and their daughter, as well as the revelation of how they have grown differently and apart from each other over the past 30 years.
The unravelling of their marriage and confrontation of differing views on gender roles, parenting methods, and ways to serve are also tender to watch. Tender as in raw and candid, the extended exchange touching on all the sore spots of their relationship that never had to come to light until now.
It’s in some ways touching as it is viscerally jarring to see Neo and Lim in all these various emotional dispositions and configurations, going from affectionate and loving to completely unsympathetic, even full-on shouting at each other. At some point you can’t help but wonder what is real and what isn’t, because seeing a real-life couple intensely muscling through such emotional extremities cannot be anything but a labour of love — for the art and for each other. It’s a play that begs the question: where else can religion be so effectively used as an extrapolative exploration of the overly pragmatic tendencies of a neo-liberal society?
Amid the well-timed and surprisingly natural inclusions of married-couple humour, what Tender Submission excels at is rewarding those with first-hand experience of church-life and it’s specific parlance the pleasure of resonance, while giving those who have only seen or heard of those experiences nuanced insights into the complexities of practicing faith in Singapore, and the human universality of those struggles. What it challenges Christians to think about is what consists of a church — the people or the physical space? And for non-Christians, how far should one go in defence of their self-beliefs over the collective intention to do good?
As much as Christianity and religion provide a sense of belonging to the young country we are, this cultural system also offers an alternative source of self-knowledge. What is thus most profound about this play is how the two have also come to see themselves in a new light, to acknowledge how time has weathered their approach to faith into a new shape and form — either with more clarity or an increasing lack of. Where Catherine’s vision believes “Where your treasure is / There your heart will be”, David’s is “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house” and both approaches are just as important.
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