TNS’ attempt to subvert the SG60 celebrations is a patchy collection of stories about government surveillance and control that instead reveals its own insecurities.

If there’s one thing Singaporeans crave, it’s control, whether over order, and how we’re seen by others. SG Insecure, The Necessary Stage’s (TNS) latest work, sets out to question that national impulse. Framed as a subversive take on the SG60 celebrations, SG Insecure introduces three new short plays by TNS Associate Artists A Yagnya, Sindhura Kalidas and Deonn Yang, with additional text by Haresh Sharma. The title, a pun on “SGSecure”, feels apt, hinting not just at national vigilance but the deeper, more personal insecurity that fuels our obsession with control. The concept promises sharp satire, but what emerges instead is a production so cautious, so anxious to manage its message, that it ends up policing itself.

Yagnya’s Bleeding Trees opens the evening with a compelling premise, connecting early Indian rubber plantation workers to modern-day migrant labourers caught in the aftermath of the 2013 Little India Riots. Vishnucharan Naidu, stepping in as a last-minute replacement for Sivakumar Palakrishnan, performs both roles with sincerity, such as when he prays to Aatha back home, but his portrayal never quite evolves, and innocence remains his only register, when the story cries out for greater disillusionment and defiance. There are moments of poignancy, especially when the ensemble transforms into a many-handed deity guiding him, or the sudden chaos of the riot sequence. But even those feel underdeveloped, hinting at something powerful that never materialises.

Sindhura Kalidas’ A New Dawn revisits the 1954 Fajar Trial through a present-day lens, where four undergraduates (Shrey Bhargava, Munah Bagharib, Jamil Schulze and Cheryl Ho) receive a POFMA correction notice and must decide whether to comply. It’s a scenario charged with possibility, dealing with censorship, privilege, the self-surveillance of fear, yet the writing deflates it almost immediately. The dialogue is weighed down by exposition, each character feels like they’re delivering rehearsed lines rather than living through the stakes, and despite the cast’s best efforts, their energy gets swallowed by the oddly-paced dialogue. Even the flashlight interrogation sequence, a clever directorial idea, feels forced in practice.

Yang’s (dis)tributaries takes a bold swing into surreal comedy, imagining a future Singapore in the throes of a water crisis, where a restless Merlion (Munah Bagharib, in a striking sculpted white wig) searches for a lost medal once awarded for cleaning up the river. The setup is gleefully absurd, and there’s fun to be had watching Munah lean into the camp, but the piece never quite figures out what it’s parodying. Scenes drift without logic or emotional anchor, making the energy fizzle, then vanish. Moli Mohter and Jodi Chan do their best to hold the madness together, bringing energy and comic timing to moments that don’t deserve them, while Cheryl Ho pops up as a gleefully exaggerated politician in white shirt and pants, gesticulating wildly as she announces one austerity measure after another.

All three playlets are connected by a framing device that’s meant to parody bureaucracy: the “SG Insecure Task Force”, a government body in bright orange jackets supposedly presenting these works as part of a national showcase. This should have been the spine that held the evening together, a sly jab at state-sanctioned art and our obsession with order, but it collapses under its own weight.

The ensemble playing the task force lacks distinct personalities, the pacing drags, and the comedy rarely lands. When jokes do appear, they drop the ball when it comes to delivering the punchline – a gag about how the only Tamil song Singaporean Chinese know is Munnaeru Vaalibaa earns an awkward chuckle before dying in the follow-up when they spell out that it’s about privilege, while a limp quip about faux secularism being compromised barely musters a reaction before it is shushed by their own characters.

The meta-commentary, too, feels laboured. The task force often comments on each play and playwright as it unfolds, but instead of heightening the satire, it exposes the production’s insecurity: it just doesn’t trust us enough to get it. Slides flash quotes about Singapore from academics and journalists, drones buzz overhead, and security cameras blink in the background, as if to hammer home that this is “a play about surveillance.” The result is that in its eagerness to control interpretation, SG Insecure becomes the very paternalistic machine it wants to parody.

That fear reaches its peak in the final moments, when the play drops all pretence of subtlety and delivers its message head-on: that we may laugh now, but what if we are the ones policing our neighbours and cheering innocents on death row? It’s a striking idea, but shouted rather than suggested and integrated. Instead of trusting silence or contradiction to speak, SG Insecure spells everything out, flattening any room for nuance. For a work meant to provoke reflection, it ends up telling us what to think.

There are still glimmers of artistry across the board, but these are mostly fleeting, and never very cohesive. The set, while flexible, often feels strangely empty, and the absence of ambient music at key moments partly contributes to that. The result is a production that feels both overstuffed and undercooked: a play that wants to say everything but never knows how. The tragedy is that while the cast clearly understands the rhythm of parody, the script simply doesn’t give them the scaffolding to sustain it. The result feels like a situation in search of a point, a satire without sting, too polite to bite and too timid to let go.

For a company with The Necessary Stage’s reputation for bold, incisive theatre, SG Insecure feels unusually timid. It mistakes self-awareness for intelligence, wordplay for critique, and moralising for meaning. In trying to expose Singapore’s culture of control, it ironically succumbs to it, too neat, nervous, and desperate to be understood. It doesn’t so much subvert the SG60 celebrations as mirror them, polished and performative to the last. SG Insecure wants to make us question what we’re celebrating, but in the end, all it reveals is how afraid we are to let the truth hang unspoken.

Photo Credit: Tuckys Photography

SG Insecure plays from 29th October to 8th November 2025 at Practice Space @ The Theatre Practice. Tickets available from BookMyShow.

Production Credits

Playwrights A Yagnya, Sindhura Kalidas, Deonn Yang, Haresh Sharma Director Haresh Sharma Assistant Director Deonn Yang Cast Cheryl Ho, Jamil Schulze, Jodi Chan, Moli Mohter, Munah Bagharib, Shrey Bhargava, Vishnucharan Naidu Dramaturg Melissa Lim Sound Designer Safuan Johari Lighting Designer Faith Liu Yong Huay Set and Technical Coordinator AK (Kumarran) Costume Coordinator Tan Jia Hui Captioner Joanna Ong