Playing with Fire

by Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips
Checkpoint Theatre
Drama Centre Black Box, Singapore

Don’t play with fire unless you want to get burned, so the saying goes. The same is true for both individuals and institutions. This debut full-length play by Checkpoint Associate Artist Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips, directed by Claire Wong, is billed as a conflict between Singapore's industrial past and green future, pitting the oil and gas industry against movements for clean energy and environmental activism. 

A playwright, Sue Rozario (Rebecca Ashley Dass), sets out to interview various individuals from an unnamed petrochemical firm situated on an offshore Singapore island, seeking to gather material to develop a play. The interviewees range in age and experience: a retired manager (Nora Samosir), a senior technician (Rafaat Haji Hamzah), a mid-career professional (Gosteloa Spancer) and finally a rookie process engineer (Cheryl Lee). As the conversations unravel and they delve into both the industry as a whole and a serious fire incident that took place at the site, it is the personal stories of this group that come to the fore.

Sue is portrayed as somewhat of a stoic green crusader at the outset, determinedly prejudiced against the industry and wondering why anyone would ever want to work there. Her character slowly develops a more nuanced understanding of the specific role it plays in the economy, discovering that when it comes to building a career, providing for a family and doing work that matters, things are rarely black or white. 

Photo Credit: Joseph Nair, courtesy of Checkpoint Theatre

As someone who works in a bank where sustainability is all the rage, I was keen to see the issue of decarbonisation get fleshed out on the stage. Oil and gas, is, after all, a major polluter to the environment. Perhaps, coming from a playwright with a background in environmental science, we would get stuck into discussions about energy transition, net-zero emissions and even the Singapore-Asia Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance that was released at the end of last year by the MAS and its impact on an industry like this. Yet, the play barely scratches the surface. There’s a throwaway reference about avoiding open flames on the site. A character mentions applying for an internal transfer to a role in clean energy but nothing further is offered about what this entails. I was hoping for a sophisticated introduction to the topic for a broader audience but the industry these characters operate in ultimately becomes little more than a backdrop.

The more Sue loosens up and opens herself to the process, the more we discover her personal connections with these individuals. There are resonant stories, no doubt, about falling outs amongst friends, ideological divides between parent and child and even Eurasian identity that simmer to the surface but they seem tangential in a play like this, ultimately competing with the more serious themes at hand. An emotional outburst about a mean university prank strikes an odd note.

Photo Credit: Joseph Nair, courtesy of Checkpoint Theatre

I have been a fan of Claire Wong’s assured, sensitive direction in productions such as Occupation, The Way We Go and Eat Duck but it unfortunately did not work for me here at all. The play opens with the cast standing in a row, staring into the middle distance and speaking with the air of a lecturer delivering a PowerPoint presentation. Scene changes are marked by the actors rolling around barrels in protracted, stylized movements that prove genuinely distracting. Conversations drag and the ninety minutes feels much longer than it actually is. Dass turns in a credible performance as Sue but there's little rapport between her and the other characters which makes it hard for us to empathize with them. The only honest, wholesome relationship is the one between her and Rafaat’s wonderfully authentic technician character towards the end.

Phillips is most certainly a voice to watch and I enjoyed her quietly powerful eight-part podcast Vulnerable released during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is maturity, depth and humour in her writing that shines through and I couldn’t help but feel that this story was not harnessed to its full potential. Playing With Fire deals with important issues that concern us all and I certainly hope this will not be the last we hear of these on the stage.

The Crystalwords score: 2.5/5