A sour jumble of ideas about food security

This show wants to talk about Singapore's relationship with food and the anxiety over how the climate crisis affects people's food sources, but there is something in it that feels forced.

- Clement Yong

THEATRE PICKLE PARTY The Theatre Practice Esplanade Annexe Studio Sept 12

Its veering from lecture to pickling workshop to contrived emotional frustration between two actors with skeletal stories gives it a random quality that barely conjures a vibe, not to mention a point.

It never satisfyingly answers its central proposition of why pickling. Is it just to restore a connection to food? A rather futile regaining of a sense of control amid global uncertainties?

As a solution to the food crisis, it is close to meaningless. Though perhaps as a workshop outside the theatre setting, it may provide a forum that allows people to come together to build communities of care.

Conceptualised and co-directed by The Theatre Practice associate artist Ang Xiao Ting, the amorphous Pickle Party evolved from the multilingual theatre company's pickling workshops at its annexe space over two years.

Some of the concerns are quintessentially Ang, principally the food anxiety like that which paralysed unsuccessful restaurateur Andrew Marko in her much more effective 2022 work Extinction Feast.