[Review] Rebel Without a Singaporean Cause: Revisit 90s Growing Pains with Wild Rice’s The Serangoon Gardens Techno Party of 1993

Watching Wild Rice’s latest production, The Serangoon Gardens Techno Party of 1993, felt like stumbling into a fragmented, neon-drenched memory of my own youth. Growing up in Singapore during the ’90s and early 2000s, I could instantly identify with the play’s cultural references and the simmering tension it portrays. From the Great Singapore Workout to the ban on chewing gum and the social stigma against men with long hair, I have lived vicariously through the same period.

Playwright Joel Tan and director Sim Yan Ying “YY” have crafted a eclectic, hyper-local punk dream that is as entertaining as it is uncomfortably familiar. I am glad to have caught it together with my rebellious pal of yesteryear, Aaron, who is the same age as me. After the show, we had fun catching up on the silly shit we got into during our youth, much like the lead character. Rebel with a Singaporean cause. Checkered, but not quite checkered, with a middle class upbringing.

The premise is pretty straight-forward.

Sixteen-year-old Candice, played with superb, fiery angst by Coco Wang, lives in a landed house in Serangoon Gardens in 1993 and is fed up with her devout Christian mother, the polite neighbourhood and the safe life she sees around her. She is obsessed with music magazines like BigO, grungy alt rock radio, MTV imagery. When her mother burns her stash of tapes and posters, this becomes the spark for the plunge into a night-long odyssey of sex, drugs, danger and freedom – the Serangoon Techno Party of 1993.

The early ’90s Singapore was when we were just beginning to grasp global culture, when the internet was a faint glimmer and rebellion meant something different. It was the year when the World Wide Web (WWW) was made available to the public for free by CERN, a pivotal moment in the history of the internet. In Singapore, under then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong’s administration, a regionalisation strategy was formally launched to propel Singapore onto the world stage. In the same year, the Singapore government also famously banned Madonna’s “Girlie Show World Tour” due to its perceived “obscene” nature.

It got me thinking about how far Singapore has come in terms of media censorship, freedom of expression and exposure to global culture. The play itself is very aware of that tension: the orderly facade of Singapore Inc. and the wildness bubbling under it. These global themes were well encapsulated and depicted through one night of crazy youth drama, exploring the confusion between wanting something else bigger, yet living within the rules. We have all been there and there is a Candice in us at some point in life.

Performance-wise, Coco Wang is an absolute force, capturing the messy, unhinged spirit of an Ang Moh Lian desperate to feel something real. Her performance is the show’s emotional anchor, grounding the chaos even when the narrative occasionally veers off track into the fantastical. Her colloquialisms and desperate sincerity are perfectly on point, making her angst relatable whether she’s spouting expletives or awkwardly flirting.

The ensemble moves around her like fragments of a hallucination. Shane Mardjuki bounces between caricatures with manic energy, while Jackson Hurwood, as a diplomat’s son, arrives like a jolt of electricity, unnerving and magnetic. A particularly complex dynamic unfolds with Jun Vinh Teo’s 21-year-old police officer. The play flirts with a troubling romance here, and while the chemistry between Teo and Wang produces some of the most tender moments, the script seems unsure whether to critique or romanticise the glaring power imbalance. Veteran actress, Karen Tan, as Candice’s mom and the older Candice, delivered strong performances, despite did not having much material to shine with.

Visually, the set design of gleaming white tiles like an empty swimming pool and a box-like stage conveys the feel of a sterile, controlled space that is then invaded by chaos. Sound and multimedia elements convey the rush of rebellion, featuring techno beats, alt-rock riffs, visuals of raves, police raids, flash moments of danger.

The Serangoon Gardens Techno Party of 1993 leaves you with a lingering feeling, especially for Singaporeans and those who grew up in Singapore. It is that quiet hum of frustration many of us know. That understanding that to live in Singapore is to constantly negotiate between the comfort of conformity and the seductive, dangerous call of the chaos we keep neatly tidied away. It does not always hit its mark (uneven pacing and the narrative veering dangerously close to going off tangent with the fantasy elements), but in Coco Wang’s raw performance and its unapologetic grunge, it captures a specific, rebellious spirit that reminds us our history was never as clean as we remember.

If you go: note the content warnings of abundance drug references, strong language, depictions of sexual assault and police brutality. It is definitely not for those who gets easily offended.

All in all, it is a solid mood piece, an homage to a vanished version of Singapore, executed with energy and occasional lapses, but worth catching before it ends on 1 November 2025.

Ticketing and show details.