Burning as an act of ritual is such an ancient tradition, it’s easy to forget why we do it. Certainly for the Chinese-Singaporean siblings at the centre of Merlynn Tong’s play Golden Blood, burning is as perplexing as it is meaningful, as much a burden as a way of paying homage.
They’ve just cremated their mother, whose suicide orphans them at a crucial juncture in their development. There is the question of guardianship, given the girl (Tong) is 14 and her brother (Charles Wu) is 21. And then there’s the question of money.
The play opens with that cremation, the two siblings standing in silhouette against a brightly coloured wall like forced participants in a James Turrell exhibition. It’s an abstracted image, but it neatly conveys the power and impact of the funeral pyre, its violence and its finality. Of course, the dead are only as dead as we allow them to be, and soon the fallout of their mother’s legacy begins to haunt the children, even to corrupt their relationship.
