GEORGE TOWN: The loves, lives and losses of George Town’s 1940s elite were the subject of George Town Festival’s (GTF) site-specific drama, 2 Houses, which took place recently at Soonstead Mansion in Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah.
The two-act play, written and directed by Singaporean actor Lim Yu-Beng and produced by Tan Kheng Hua and Joe Sidek, saw a cast of Singaporean, Malaysian, Australian and British actors perform in the various spaces of one of George Town’s iconic mansions.
The plot followed the intertwined fates of two George Town families whose ancestors migrated to Penang from China in the late 19th century.
Fifty years later, at the outbreak of the Pacific War and the fall of Kota Baru to the Japanese invaders, their descendants gathered for a party in the home of wealthy plantation owner Heah.
The second act, set seven years later in 1948, returns to the same character six months after the declaration of the Malayan Emergency.
Filled with live music, including two songs penned by Lim himself, the sold-out play made full use of the spaces of Soonstead.
Lim said that the play was in part inspired by Penang and Singapore’s relationship as “alter egoes” with shared histories, and that it was his personal connection to Penang through his father that drew him to explore the stories of the island.