a labour of love and laughs

I generally like musicals and I'm pretty patriotic, so there was no hesitation to take up an offer of free tickets to watch A Labour of Love, put up by NTUC.

The music was grandiose and inspiring, almost like a local version of Les Miz with its revolutionary themes of self-sacrifice and hope for a better age. I particularly liked the scene where they opened the first NTUC Fairprice, which would certainly make a perfect TV ad.

But the real gems were in the script, which had me doubled up in laughter on more than a few occasions. It was like watching a dramatised version of a national education textbook. Where else do you here "little red dot" and "against all odds" used in the same sentence? They certainly don't fit into common parlance. It was totally hilarious because the characters are all speaking in rather colloquial Singlish, but every now and then you would get snippets lifted out of the PAP phrasebook like "our effective and efficient government".

Some of the humour was contextual too. Like this dialogue towards the end:
Union Leader: Are you feeling better today?
Dying Wife: I'm ok. Did you attend the union meeting this morning?
(Followed by a lengthy schpiel on the importance of the unions and the ideals they all espouse, macham like deathbed speech.)

And when the grandfather relates the tragic event of her death to his grandson years later, he remarks, "It wasn't all bad. At least we had NTUC Income Shield."

But probably the funniest comment was from the person who brought us to the show. "I want to tear my NTUC membership ..."