PLAY TIME

March and April usher in the heavyweight season openers of major theatre companies in Singapore, almost all eligible for SG Culture Pass credits. The Straits Times picks six shows worth your time and money

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Glen Goei will tap his religious upbringing to immerse audiences in The Christians, American playwright Lucas Hnath's play set in the halls of a prosperous megachurch. ST PHOTO: GIN TAY

(GIN TAY)

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s drama of unhappy families and secret affairs Three Sisters (1901) has been transplanted from its Russian setting to other conflict-ridden milieux - from 1990s Belfast during the Irish Troubles to Nigeria, when Biafra attempted to secede in 1967.

Now, Southeast Asia gets its own version, but without the military overtones.

Singapore playwright Stephanie Street’s Force Majeure is Pangdemonium’s opener for its final season. It plays at Victoria Theatre from March 6 to 15 after co-founders Adrian and Tracie Pang dropped the shock announcement of the theatre company’s closure earlier in February.

Street, 49, who wrote The Straits Times Life Theatre Award-winning Dragonflies in 2017, has departed from Chekhov's text in a fundamental way. “We don’t want to imagine a war. That’s no fun right now. We've replaced the soldiers with artists.”

In Chekhov’s version, sisters Olga, Masha and Irina, as well as brother Andrei, wrestle with ennui and declining fortunes in a provincial garrison town in Russia after the death of their brigadier-general father, dreaming of Moscow.