Mama’s Getting Married?!

How’d you react if your 56-year-old mother tells you that you’re going to get a new stepfather?

Mama’s Wedding revolves around 3 grown-up daughters whose mother is remarrying at the age of 56.

With 3 very different personalities connected only by a common mother, they banter about the upcoming wedding and their rocky relationships with relatives, among many other everyday topics.

Playwright Mark Beau de Silva writes in his message to the audience that he is thankful to director Samantha Scott-Blackhall for bringing his ‘mother and sisters’ to life.

Indeed the 3 Eurasian actresses do make you feel like you’re almost part of their characters’ not-so-happy family.

The girls

The eldest – Ruth, known affectionately to her sisters as Girlie (Played by Carina Hales), is a writer living on her own in Singapore. She’s always at odds with her mother, or in her own words, “I’m not fighting with mama. I’m just not talking to her.”

Girlie’s 2 sisters live with their mother in the family home in Penang. The second daughter – Emily (Played by Candice De Rozario), is an extrovert who hides her insecurity behind brash words and loud opinions. She’s jobless, tactless and in a relationship with another woman.

Betty (Played by Elizabeth Tan), the youngest of the trio, is quiet, passive and the only one daughter who’s lucky enough to look the part of an Eurasian which her Oriental-looking sisters grumble about having their ethnicity mistaken frequently. She works at the local animal shelter, and her romance with the volunteer doctor is the butt of many jokes between Emily and Girlie.

 

Girl talk

Despite the name ‘Mama’s Wedding’, mama does not appear in the play at all, but that doesn’t really matter as the banter and chemistry between the 3 sisters over the phone is more than enough to include their audience in their lives and relive the stories that they have to tell.

Girlie is in trouble with their mother. A nosy relative, one out of the many the girls seem to have, had told the girls’ mother about how Girlie had villianised her in her latest book. As a result, the bride-to-be is determined not to talk to her eldest daughter, to the extent of not inviting Girlie to the wedding.

But Girlie feels wronged because “it’s just children fiction!” to her and she doesn’t know what the big fuss is all about. However, with the wedding looming, it is up to Emily and Betty to convince Girlie to return to Penang for the wedding and prevent this squabble from marring the happy occasion.

Safely behind the closed doors of their own homes, the girls are almost painfully frank in their speech and actions. They do just about everything unpresentable that just about everyone does in the privacy of our homes but will never dare to admit to doing.

The sisters poke fun at their annoying relatives who love to poke noses into their private affairs. Emily openly mocks them by reenacting loud and exaggerated imitations of the way their relatives annoy them, like, for example, how their Aunt Bessie sneers at non-branded goods. Their antics tickle the audience into laughing along with them, probably because most of those watching have probably done the same.

The conversations also move into unabashed discussions about the love lives and fetishes of the whole family, where even Mama is not spared.

Girlie speaks of her relationship with an Indian man, not sparing any details of how far they’ve gone, and even makes fun of his accent. This kiss-and-tell prompts Emily to joke about how Girlie seems to have inherited their mother’s taste in men.

But little sister Betty shushes her immediately, telling her that she “does not have to know” about such things because it is just too wrong to think of her own mother’s romantic adventures, bringing to light the uncommonly broached taboo topic of the sexuality of older women.

Through their jabbering, the 3 sisters give the audience a sense of how their inter-sibling relationships work. Despite being close, they still have their share of sibling rivalry and fights. They don’t just give the audience something to laugh at with their witty jokes, but also touching scenes to tear up at, when their differences cause a fight to erupt between Girlie and Emily.

 

The makeup

The structure of the play is very simple – the set, which is divided up into Betty’s living room in Singapore and the living room of their family home in Malaysia, doesn’t change at all throughout the whole play.

There are also minimal costume changes, with Betty the only one who changes into nightclothes just once in the play.

However, the lack of crashing chandeliers or stunning sets doesn’t take much away from the substance of the play. Without high-tech sound effects and the likes, the actresses still manage to make the play a success by rendering convicting portrayals of the 3 sisters.

Their lines, delivered in a liberal mix of English and Malay, adds to the sense of locality which allow the audience to identify with them more intimately.

Every emotion is excellently portrayed and it almost feels voyeuristic to be watching them because after a while, you’d feel like a peeping Tom peering into the living rooms.

Mama’s Wedding is a play about 3 Eurasian sisters whose mother is getting married again at the age of 56. Through a series of phone calls, the audience is given an intimate look into their lives as the younger two are trying their best to convince their eldest sister to forget the cold war she has going on with their mother and return to their family home in Penang for the wedding.

UrbanWire gives Mama’s Wedding 4 out of 5 stars.

 

The Details

Dates: 3-13 Jul 2008 Tue – Fri, 8PM, Sat – Sun, 3PM & 8PM (No performance on Monday)

Duration: Approximately 80 mins (no intermission)

Venue: 42 Waterloo Street, The Room Upstairs @ ACTION Theatre

Ticket Prices (Exclude Booking Fee): S$40 (Fri & Sat, 8PM), S$35 (Tue – Thu & Sun, 8PM), S$30 (Sat & Sun, 3PM)

Advisory: Mature Themes (For 16 years and above)