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Fried Rice Paradise puts fate of hawker food and country in audience's hands
The Straits Times
|August 16, 2025
Asian superstar Dick Lee's Singlish ditty Fried Rice Paradise has the nine lives of a cat.
THEATRE FRIED RICE PARADISE - THE MAKAN PARTY SRT Paradox Singapore Hotel Aug 14 Asian superstar Dick Lee's Singlish ditty Fried Rice Paradise has the nine lives of a cat.
It was first composed in 1974 for a talent contest organised by radio station Rediffusion Singapore. It has since been reincarnated into two full-fledged musicals centred on the mis/fortune of hawker entrepreneur Bee Lean, and then in 2019 as a Channel 5 mystery drama about the turbulent restaurant industry.
Now, it returns in an immersive dinner theatre format, staged by SRT at the Paradox Singapore Hotel ballroom in Clarke Quay and re-adapted by playwright Thomas Lim, who in 2024 also wrote the interactive National Day Charade. From a straightforward story of two daughters vying to inherit their mother Bee Lean's Fried Rice Paradise restaurant, Lim has found symbolism for the dual tensions of cosmopolitan ambition and heartland nostalgia at the heart of purported global city Singapore.
This story is from the August 16, 2025 edition of The Straits Times.
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