The opening is incredible: the Esplanade Theatre Studio is engulfed in a cloud of white fog, while Rizman Putra cries out in Malay, awakening the spirit of the tiger to return to its seven palaces. The mist then clears against a soundscape of ambient rainforest noise and ear-splitting electronic rock, revealing live musicians and dancer Osman Hamid, prowling in a sarong and long unkempt hair, encased in a Perspex box.
What bothers me, however, is that the piece is severely lacking in content. After the poetic prologue, we move into a less well-written narrative in English about the marginalization of the tiger in Singapore - fairly absorbing at first, but eventually repetitive, overwrought, and underdeveloped. The only historical moment presented is the tiger attack on the colonial surveyor George Coleman – never mind director/co-writer Ho Tzu Nyen's reflections in the program about the tiger's cultural connections with the Malayan Communists. The spectacle, too, wears thin after a while: one can tire of seeing a man dancing angstily in a box, even amidst the flashing lights and savage music.
I had – and still have – high hopes for the new theatre/music collective 3 Tigers, whose members represent some of the coolest forces in local contemporary arts. This, however, is a slightly disappointing beginning, one that doesn't live up to the full potential of its material.