A TAP of the cigarette here and a puff there. Talk over a coffee table. Urban Conversations 1 was an intimate eavesdrop at the verbal action between Carol and David.

These two hapless individuals hit it off over the slash marks that riddle their arms and, as the play unfolds, we learn of the unseen psychical scars wrought by their upbringing. Etched onto living flesh, their mutilations cry out as words of anguish that must be heard.

However, the interplay of the set and photography suggests an enclosing and intrusive urbanity upon the two self-disclosing adults. Flanking the pair on stage are two stretches of black cloth hung vertical with seemingly silver windows.

Photographs of the two characters in various city localities are projected on and splintered by an uneven background of canvas. The concrete modernity seems to loom over and fracture the lives and conversation of this melancholic pair. This disruption finds resonance with the "gaps in conversations, dialogues and consciousness" with which director Wong Kwang Han characterises the one-act play.

Nonetheless, what Carol and David speak to each other does constitute an insistent, forward-moving plot. A common repug­nance towards their parents becomes the seed of patricide for Carol and matricide for David.
In the first half, the predominantly casual and almost flippant tone is exquisitely (mis)matched with murderous intent The second half forsakes all appearance of mirth however, for a darker edge. The two friends turn on each other with accusations, using what one knows in confidence against the other.

As the plot advances, both characters step out of time to relate their private needs, anguish and fantasies. These intimations have the effect of explaining and intensifyingtheir revenge on their parents. The play concludes with the cryptic broadcast of Abbas Fernando as the pair, now smiling, appear to leave for some holiday destination. The significant gap of the play remains how they achieved their se­renity did they kill their parents after all?

Whether during height­ened moments or their lighter counterparts; writers and actors Wong Kwang Han and Davin Gill excelled in fleshing out their co-authored script.

What mystified, however, was the pivotal scene where Carol lectures David on him to live a socially viable life, She actually wins him over with rhetoric that is didactic, weighed down with too many pedestrian truisms and ultimately seeking human love and acceptance.

This has the effect of reducing Carol and David to two-dimensional seekers of "forever friends". Did the play somehow lose sight of the dark dignity of the characters' complex pain? Or did the play depict the pair's eagerness for social integration to solicit our unease and interroga­tion of social norms?

The only certainty is more talk over the coffee table.

Arthur Kok