Boss and Joy, employees of OK Land

OK Land
Circle Theatre (Thailand)
Online
12–23 January 2022
Part of M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2022

Convenience stores are quick and dirty. We visit them for an easy fix to satisfy our hunger, thirst, or nicotine and alcohol urges. Little thought is given to it, and we even overlook the higher prices in exchange for the sheer convenience.

But in Circle Theatre’s OK Land, a chain of convenience stores in Angel Land, it becomes an arena where the wants of different segments of society play out.  

The whole set-up is a thinly veiled reference to a dystopian future that is quite close to home. As the Zombie Ant disease ravages the whole world, we see two store employees; a food blogger; an architect that has just returned from Trumpland; a student activist; a poor, hungry woman; and a ghost coalescing in the convenience store. 

Triggered by the poor woman trying to steal food from the store, issues of growing restrictions, corporate dominance, inefficient bureaucracy, social media prominence as social capital, and political activism come to the fore.

As the characters debate how best to help the woman, while a ghost bears witness by filming everything, personal interests are slowly revealed. This shows how messy socio-political issues can be as it is difficult to untangle the personal from the political.

The characters try to help Pa Orn, the poor and hungry woman

Yet, in the midst of the cacophonous debate, we hardly hear the poor woman apart from her laments and desperate outbursts.

Even though the show is being touted as a reflection on society by other critics, something is missing as most of the characters are middle class. We soon realise that this particular outlet of Ok Land is near a condominium that some of the characters live in, several storeys above the majority of the population. 

Despite these flaws, kudos to director Paspawisa Jewpattanagul for a taut production and playwright Nuttamon Pramsumran for fleshing out a variety of important issues, without forcibly shoehorning them into the production. 

Additionally, the Zombie Ant disease is not merely a quirky alternative to COVID-19. It is an allegory of how we are hosts to the ills of society and are blindly behaving according to the way these ills have structured society. 

At the end of the show, there is a rallying cry from the student activist to work towards change; to carry on even though it feels hopeless. But how do we change course when we, like the ants, only recognise our territory and therefore our path by familiar smells?  

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OK Land was originally staged from 3 to 12 December 2020 at 6060 Arts Space, Bangkok, Thailand. The online stream for the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival features a recording of one of the performances.