As far as actor and playwright Merlynn Tong is concerned, her audience can go to hell. And she’s quite happy to help take them there. Figuratively speaking that is.
Her Brisbane Festival play LEGENDS (of the Golden Arches), written with Joe Paradise Lui and starring both writers, is a deeply personal examination of the Asian cultural experience. Playing QPAC’s Cremorne Theatre in September, it plunges two best friends into the depths of the Chinese Underworld during a funeral vigil.
These two besties, Merlynn and Joe, find themselves in the midst of a traditional Chinese funeral for their grandfathers in Australia.
As they spend the night in vigil, Merlynn is trying to remember the rituals and wants Joe to join her in performing the rites. Joe, frustrated with tradition, thinks it’s just a load of superstition.
This wild ride in the depths of the Chinese afterlife unravels the bonds of friendship, culture and redemption
The lords of the Underworld have their own thoughts on all of this, and they’re going to drag our heroes beyond the grave to resolve their differences. In their efforts to escape, they meet the gods of their Singaporean childhood, grapple with demons of the underworld and confront the crossroads of their past.
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This wild ride in the depths of the Chinese afterlife unravels the bonds of friendship, culture and redemption – and showcases hell like you’ve never seen before. Sounds scary?
“Well, it’s quite silly really,” Tong explains. “It’s not too spooky, more irreverent and funny than spooky.”
Anyone growing up in Singapore or Hong Kong will be familiar with the Hungry Ghose Festival when, among other things, a currency known as hell bank notes (fake money) is burnt along with various effigies as offerings to the dead. It’s hoped they can use the hell bank notes when they get to the afterlife, along with other material items burnt in effigy.
“For the Hungry Ghost Festival in Singapore people perform on stage for the ghosts and the people in loud and gaudy costumes,” Tong says. “In the play I’m the more traditional one and I want to do the burning, and Joe refuses to do it. He burns a real item and that’s bad luck and then we take the audience with us to hell.”
The play has already been performed at the Perth Festival and at the RISING Festival in Melbourne. Brisbane Festival will complete the triumvirate of seasons.
“We applied for multi-festival funding and were lucky enough to get it,” Tong explains.
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In Tim Byrne’s review in Guardian Australia, he writes of Lui and Tong descending into “Diyu – a wondrous phantasmagoria of inflatable gods, neon-bright costumes and dodgy karaoke – on a mission of self-realisation and forgiveness.
“There they encounter the Heibai Wuchang, two deities that represent the undying loyalty of friendship, as well as the God of War, Guan Yu, and the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin. These beings mock them, threaten them and, in the process, maybe cure them of their doubts and hesitancies.”
Tong admits this world may be unfamiliar to many Westerners.
“But it has been fun showing people this world, which is so obvious to us,” she says.
Tong is a Brisbane-based playwright, screenwriter and actor. Some of her other playwriting credits include Antigone (Queensland Theatre and Mercury Theatre, UK), Good Grief (Queensland Theatre), Caesar (co-writer, La Boite Theatre), Blue Bones (Playlab Productions), Come to Where I am (Critical Stages Touring and Paines Plough Theatre Company, UK), SKIN (Dear Australia, Playwriting Australia) and Ma Ma Ma Mad (Wax Lyrical).
She was a resident writer at La Boite Theatre in 2022 and the 2020 resident writer at Melbourne Theatre Company.
Her one-woman-show Blue Bones by Playlab Productions, in which she also performed, has won six Matilda Awards, including the Lord Mayor Award for Best New Australian Work, Best Mainstage Production and Best Female Actor in a Leading Role. In 2023, her work Golden Blood was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier Literary Award, NSW Premier’s Literary Award, as well as Sydney Theatre Award (Best New Australian Work).
Some of her performances include The Poison of Polygamy (La Boite and Sydney Theatre Company), IDK (Force Majeure) and Golden Blood (Griffin Theatre/Melbourne Theatre Company).
LEGENDS (of the Golden Arches) plays the Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, September 17 to 20.
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