A striking treatise on grief, money, family, and whatever comes after us, Golden Blood takes its audience into the underbelly of Singapore where a dysfunctional dyad makes their way through. Nurtured through the MTC’s Cybec Electric and NEXT STAGE programs, and with a 2022 Sydney premiere with Griffin Theatre Company, its Melbourne re-debut opens to a standing ovation on opening night. Following a brother ‘Boy’ and a sister ‘Girl’ over seven years, Merlynn Tong’s writing is gold-class dramaturgical excellence. The high intensity duologue unfolds over a little under two glorious hours; an incredible play that resonated deeply with me, a theatre kid from a Singaporean-Eurasian and Malaysian-Chinese family.

Under the brilliant direction of Tessa Leong, the many complexities of Golden Blood shine on the Fairfax stage. Upon seeing this play, I couldn’t help but feel reminded of a quote from Macbeth: “Here lay Duncan his silver skin laced with golden blood and his gashed stabs like a breach in nature for ruin’s wasteful entrance.” I don’t know if this was an intentional allusion, but it feels fitting. A family in pursuit of gold, siblings contesting with second place silver in the eyes of their cold-blooded mother—whose funeral we start the play at, and a brother and sister reuniting for the first time in seven years. A brother making a daring breach within the unrelenting nature of Singapore’s criminal underworld, the world beneath the skyscrapers and merlion statues. A sister’s entrance into his world, constantly at the precipice of waste, ruin, and grief. A world that fundamentally confronts the inauspicious side of a homecoming:, and the pain that comes with it.

From funeral rites, to koalas, to grief, the play and its world are laden with cultural nuanceand sibling synergy. The plot is tight and deeply personal. Merlynn Tong (‘Girl’) and Charles Wu (‘Boys’) are a golden duo (the puns are indeed intended), bantering and bickering with each other across Set and Costume Designer Michael Hankin’s minimalist stage. Tong is electric as ‘Girl,’ playing off her character’s transition from girlhood to womanhood with dynamite ease, juggling naivety, grief, and gangster dance parties with tenacity and drive. Wu oozes charisma as ‘Boy’, even in his character’s most pathetic moments, both a terrible influence and a “Singapore Number One Model citizen,” capturing the dichotomy of being the parentified eldest sibling and the irresponsible brother.

The orphaned siblings’ journey explores the burden of inheritance—both cultural and financial—the inevitability of grief, the struggles of criminal life, and the reminder that no matter what, we can “just hold onto the good parts. The rest can fuck off.” Minus the oft-repeated marsupial joke, Golden Blood is undeniably funny. There are jokes about death and the afterlife, as Boy reassures Girl when she asks about their mother, “we all go to Hell, we’re Chinese.” There are admin and bureaucracy jokes, as Boy reminds his sister of gangs having upper management: “it’s called organised crime not disorganised, leh.” And of course, there are an abundance of quips about money. “Is there inflation in hell?” Girl asks innocently. “I’m gonna be fucking rich,” Boy declares obtusely. There are also moments of physical comedy: Girl dances frenetically at her sixteenth birthday; Boy cringes with his entire body while trying to give his sister “the talk”; a duo dance takes place at a company party.

Their cross-cultural quarrels take place amidst red stools that could easily be found at a Singapore hawker centre, surrounded by looming rectangle cut-outs of what appears as a marble wall, reminiscent of skyscraper windows while also providing an effective liminal space. The dancing takes place here, as well as red light movement sequences where sketchy brother-sister bonding activities take place (It’s drugs. They do drugs. Average sibling moment).

Further accompanied by Sound Designer Rainbow Chan’s sublime compositions and Lighting Designer Fausto Brusamolino’s stunning arrangements, Leong’s direction balances the high-octane and the crushingly intimate with skill. Standout moments include the shock light changes, with the stage blacking out on a panicking Wu, save for a tiny box of light constricted to Tong’s face as the words of their dead parents spill from her mouth. The crushing invasive pinhole quality of the light betrays Wu’s ‘Boy’, suffocating under the burden of ancestry and the past. I can only imagine how much work the Stage Managers Jennifer Jackson and Liz Bird put into coordinating all of this, as well as the work of Dramaturg Jennifer Medway and Effects Consultant Emily Parsons-Lourd.

In our current cultural zeitgeist, there’s a peculiar new idea arising in certain pseudo-conservative circles that media isn’t worth engaging with unless its audience can relate, unless the media in question can be considered universal. Often times, this consideration finds its cultural authority in the perspective of a white audience. Just look at the response to recent films Elemental and Turning Red. Golden Blood is a play that effectively turns this idea upside down, inside out and sends it spinning through the eighteen circles of Chinese hell. Rarely, if ever, does it try to be anything other than what it is. It doesn’t dumb down its references nor does it make its audience feel dumb for not understanding them. I may have an ‘ang moh’ accent but I recognise Singlish when I hear it. From the intonation, to the filler words and the syntax, Tong’s play is unapologetically Singaporean. There are Chinese language moments, like the siblings reciting impassioned chants and new years greetings that had Chinese-speaking members cackling more than anyone. There are Australian references that hit harder than a Gold Coast wipeout, from Girl’s koala plushie to the dramatic irony behind her reasons for wanting to emigrate—“Australia doesn’t have a dark past, at all!”

Naturally, Tong’s play highlights the universal experience of wanting to stab your sibling—though not necessarily with a sequin-encrusted barang (a Malaysian protection knife, that I’m frankly offended I’ve never been gifted from my family)—while also wanting to stab the “prawn brains” that try anything against them. In addition, the emotional crux of the play relies on the cycles of abuse and neglect that linger throughout. Boy says to Girl, “You and me. Same branch, same breath.” They talk about the eighteen circles of hell, going round and round in a frequent but never superfluous debate over iif and how to properly honour their mother’s death. The play’s final revelation—a shock that had the entire theatre silent—comes full circle to this debate. After seven years of ‘I did this all for you’s’ and the reveal of the final betrayal, Boy admits to Girl that the reason they never honoured their mother properly was simple: no one taught him how.

I think I speak for everyone universally when I say that Golden Blood is easily a 21st century standout. Bravo to all involved.

Golden Blood is playing at the Fairbank Studio in the Arts Centre from the 25th of October to the 30th of November.