In the program notes to Legends (of the Golden Arches), performer and co-creator Joe Paradise Lui writes of the “yearning for a once-common-thing-now-lost”: the migrant experience writ large, “as unfortunate as it is universal”. It’s an idea that could also function as this show’s organising principle, grappling as it does with the long tendrils of the past – with legacy, culture and the pain of individuation.
Legends starts, as all theatre does, with ritual: in this case, the folding and burning of paper as a funerary rite. Fellow creator and performer Merlynn Tong is contentedly performing the ceremony for a recently passed relative, but Lui refuses to participate on moral grounds. This slight disagreement between friends soon spins out into a larger discussion of tradition and observance, of the expectations and cultural burdens they endure as members of the Singaporean-Chinese diaspora. Lui finds it all rather vague and problematic, and if Tong secretly agrees, she sees no harm in humouring the gods for the sake of some connection to her heritage.
