Golden Blood MTC at Melbourne Arts Center ★★★★★

Golden Blood is currently playing on Melbourne Arts Center as part of Melbourne Theater Company’s 2024 season. Read on for our critic’s review of the recent season in Sydney.

Girl (performed by Merlynn Tong, she is also a playwright) 14 years old. Dreams of moving to Australia. She wants to become a veterinarian and help all the marsupials she’s read about. The stuffed koala she clings to is a balm and a symbol of her ambition.

Boy (Charles Wu, Miss Peony) 21 years old. He dreams of wealth – enormous wealth. He wants to be a gangster. Perhaps he is already one of them. He wants to gain the respect that he believes his fellow criminals enjoy. His father’s parang (a large knife, not unlike a machete) is a balm and a symbol of his ambition.

To be clear, Girl and Boy are siblings. The death of their alcoholic mother brought them together again. Boy left the family home many years ago for reasons we later learn. The boy promises to protect the Girl. In his own way, he does it, but being damn poor in Singapore’s criminal underworld is no easy task.

Bringing with you a strong sense of self, place and culture…this is a wonderful job.

Golden Blood joins the Melbourne Theater Company after a season with the Sydney Theater Company and acclaimed indie premiere season with Griffin Theater (the company behind the winner Best Play at the inaugural Time Out Sydney Arts & Culture Awards) in 2022, bringing with it a strong sense of self, place and culture.

This is wonderful work. Over the course of 90 minutes, we follow a boy and a girl over the course of several years; Time jumps are indicated by flashes of red digital numbers representing the ages of the siblings on the designer. Michael HankinMeager, utilitarian stage. While the wider world is conveyed through Tong’s sharp, often laughable and hilarious dialogue, the play is told with two hands. Why not? The dynamic between Girl and Boy and their shared past is all that really matters here. The problem, however, is that each of them has a completely different understanding of this past.

Strong and deft performances from Tong and Wu take the victory. We see Tonga Girl grow from a naive, somewhat sheltered teenager, to a wild teenager, to a woman who understands her position in the world and how she relates to both him and the brother who has suddenly returned to her life. In contrast, Wu’s Boy is in a state of arrested development; most of the time he is a brash young man putting on a front of masculinity and success, a funny guy and a fast talker who believes he can fake it until he makes it – and if he doesn’t, he’ll just keep pretending. This. The moment of self-realization, when it finally arrives, is sudden but hard-earned.

This may sound presumptuous, but Golden Blood pulsates with life. Quick jokes and quick transitions between scenes take us through the years at breakneck speed. Pulsating score designed and composed Rainbow Chan (an innovative artist whose reputation precedes her – you can explore her visual art practice at 33rd edition of MCA Primavera), in combination with Fausto BrusamolinoThe bold lighting design immerses viewers in the hedonism of Singapore’s nightclubs without any changes to the scenery. Brusamolino’s shift to minimalism (a bright streak of light crossing a character’s eyes on a dark stage) also indicates that the play is veering into more metaphysical territory. Maybe it’s magical realism, maybe it’s an expression of generational trauma, or maybe both.

What’s really impressive is the way Golden Blood able to handle such heavy topics without stumbling or getting bogged down. Deft leadership Tessa Leong ensures that neither we nor the characters have to stew in our own juices or sink into illness – the world moves too fast and life is too short for that. Even as Boy and Girl confront long-ignored truths about themselves and their departed mother, the work is energized.

It’s clear that Merlynn Tong (who partly based the play on her own experiences) is a stunning new talent, and with Sydney Theater Company already committed to producing her upcoming work Congratulations, get rich! at the end of his season 2025she can say much more. We should consider ourselves lucky.

Golden Blood plays at the Melbourne Arts Center until November 30th and tickets are available now. Here.