No Man's Land questions ideas of manhood

Young director Sim Yan Ying is fond of vignettes. As in her previous works No Particular Order (2023) and Dive (2024), she offers here with her mentor Alvin Tan another similarly fragmented piece: a companion to her Pass.ages (2024), which explored four women at milestone ages.

- Clement Yong

THEATRE NO MAN'S LAND The Necessary Stage Esplanade Studio Theatre June 12

In No Man's Land, she crosses the gender divide not to stage an assault, but to extend an olive branch to men who are having it tough in the topsy-turvy 21st century.

Not for the first time, Sim has found effective ways to integrate dance and movement, particularly useful for a play that zeroes in on physicality and comportment.

Each short scene in this six-act play deliberately shifts the register to force the audience to reorientate, anchored by a loose overarching narrative about two estranged friends and their respective single parents.

Most of it is light-hearted, including a twist on Marilyn Monroe's Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend sequence in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and a camp tutorial by two fairies on how men should sit, stand, walk and talk.