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nathansnook's review
3.0
READING VLOG
An incredible collection of queer voices sprawled across the decades of what seems to be a conservative Singapore. Though I understand Singapore recently decriminalized gay sex, I can’t believe it took this long. it’s 2022 for God’s sake.
Dreamplay: Complete camp, taking place in different time periods, different moments of what it means to be gay in different decades. Feels like a 101 crash course into gay lingo. When it was first staged, I’m sure it was revolutionary, but now is perhaps viewed more like a carnival, like an annual showing of Paris is Burning at the Castro with fan snaps and off-pitch YAAAAAASSS’s.
Landmarks: Perhaps the strongest in the collection with vignettes of queer scenes set in clubs, saunas and the privacy of queer love. We span age differences and types, masc and femme, looking at how queer love fails, how it saves, and then fails even harder. How we love and parade and speak and joke and cry out for help and hide. Catty, theatrical, and moving. My favorite out of the bunch.
Happy Endings: The most dramatic out of the bunch in which a writer speaks with his muse, hears out the voices of his characters as if they’re real people. They become more than the page and I wish I could see this live. Incredibly meta as it dwells in past love, lost love, and how we reclaimed it in our own private ways. The last act for me fell apart as I made the realization that the characters felt more like caricatures. Sa’at’s characters are caricatures in Landmarks, but it works because the themes are stronger, easier to follow, short snippets that pack punches in their running time.
Overall, an incredible collection if you’re curious about queer culture in old Singapore in total 80s/90s aesthetics.
An incredible collection of queer voices sprawled across the decades of what seems to be a conservative Singapore. Though I understand Singapore recently decriminalized gay sex, I can’t believe it took this long. it’s 2022 for God’s sake.
Dreamplay: Complete camp, taking place in different time periods, different moments of what it means to be gay in different decades. Feels like a 101 crash course into gay lingo. When it was first staged, I’m sure it was revolutionary, but now is perhaps viewed more like a carnival, like an annual showing of Paris is Burning at the Castro with fan snaps and off-pitch YAAAAAASSS’s.
Landmarks: Perhaps the strongest in the collection with vignettes of queer scenes set in clubs, saunas and the privacy of queer love. We span age differences and types, masc and femme, looking at how queer love fails, how it saves, and then fails even harder. How we love and parade and speak and joke and cry out for help and hide. Catty, theatrical, and moving. My favorite out of the bunch.
Happy Endings: The most dramatic out of the bunch in which a writer speaks with his muse, hears out the voices of his characters as if they’re real people. They become more than the page and I wish I could see this live. Incredibly meta as it dwells in past love, lost love, and how we reclaimed it in our own private ways. The last act for me fell apart as I made the realization that the characters felt more like caricatures. Sa’at’s characters are caricatures in Landmarks, but it works because the themes are stronger, easier to follow, short snippets that pack punches in their running time.
Overall, an incredible collection if you’re curious about queer culture in old Singapore in total 80s/90s aesthetics.
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