Review: No Man’s Land (The Necessary Stage)
No Man’s Land
Co-conceptualised and co-directed by: Alvin Tan and Sim Yan Ying “YY”
Written by: Danial Matin
Performed in English, Malay, Mandarin and Hokkien
Choreographed by Hafeez Hassan
Cast: Michael Tan
Neo Hai Bin
Shahizman Sualiman
Suhaili Safari
Vishnucharan Naidu
The Necessary Stage
15 June 2025, 3pm
Esplanade Theatre Studio
Review by Aileen Tang
When gender equality is mentioned, one usually thinks about women’s opportunities and rights. Much has been said about the demands on femininity and feminism today, and the multi-faceted roles that women play. But what of men? One of the conceptual ideas shared by co-directors Alvin Tan and Sim Yan Ying ‘YY’ is how we might celebrate masculinity without reinforcing patriarchy. Why is the word masculinity associated with toxicity and aggression? The age-old question of whether it is the nature of men (as opposed to man and mankind) or society’s moulds is at the centre of ‘No Man’s Land’.
The multi-disciplinary work fuses Danial Matin’s script with Hafeez Hassan’s choreography that is impossible to take your eyes off. Aside from the low vocal drones, fragmented conversation and yells in composer and sound designer Jing Ng’s sound world, the only identifiable music was Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Rain” (from The Last Emperor) and Ravel’s “Bolero”. The silences –such as when a father and son sit opposite each other at the dinner table – are stark in contrast and striking in their representation of how much of our stories are muted. Movement, light and sound, when taken apart, made no sense – much like the definitions and expectations of masculinity – yet they all fit together in a complementary whirl of confrontation and introspection.
The work comprises several vignettes carried by a 5-person cast. The 1st scene – if we can call it that – portrays the primal instincts of competition and survival of the fittest. Another shows an older man manipulating a younger man into different poses, demonstrating societal expectations of what it means to be a man. There are examinations of the parent-child relationship in the search for identity: we are told that every son is a reflection of his father and that there is no escaping the “sins of the father”. A mother is seen chastising her son while folding a single baby onesie over and over again – because while he may fulfil several different roles in life, he is first and foremost her child. The cast play a rotating ensemble of characters, vividly and seamlessly portraying the myriad personas.
Issues of body image, sexual and gender identity are all predictably explored. But one wonders if the creative team worried that some of the work’s interrogations were too subtle, as Shahizman Sulaiman took the chance to unpack some of it for the audience during the 7 minute 35 second break.
Towards the end, Suhaili Safari laments that, as the token woman in the cast, it is her role to save the men. She is the mother, the sister, the dominatrix. But this is ultimately not a play about the struggles of the female sex – for she admits that no one has it harder than men, and then launches into a tongue-in-cheek adaptation of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” – complete with pink feather boa and a high-kicking chorus line of men.
So what does it mean to be a man? Perhaps the message for us all – whatever gender we identify as – is what Michael Tan reads in a letter to his 10-year-old self: mastering others may give one strength, but it is the mastery of oneself that confers true power.
