Dazeeeeeeeeee.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Army Daze 25th Anniversary Musical held at the Drama Centre Theatre at the National Library, on Saturday, 25th August. A remake of the popular hit movie in the 1980s, it was, among other things, hilarious, enjoyable, light-hearted, and most of all, uniquely Singaporean.

The pre-show etiquette announcement was already full of atmosphere; and while trying their best to keep the classic jokes from the original movie, modern contexts were input for the younger ones. That way, they made it relevant and prevented it from looking like an ancient show.

What struck a little was the sudden turn of events after the intermission, where the characters got into conflicts which wasn’t shown in the movie. It appears, at least to me, as a subtle political tool to reemphasise the importance of serving NS to the younger ones in the crowd when the characters were encouraging one another with ‘politically-correct’ sounding words.

In any way, the loveable part about such plays is that they always allow us, the audience, to walk away not just feeling Singaporean, but identifying ourselves as Singaporean too. There was strong nationalism involved when the songs about the “Filipina Army” and “从大陆来的人” were implying heavy connotations about the roles of foreigners here and the parts they play in defending our country.

There is a huge difference in my emotions watching the play, and via the screen both before and after I wore green. Besides being able to relate truly to those jokes and mili-linguistics, I found that while all along I knew I could change lives, now that just reinforced it. Having a good laugh over something I’ll look back after decades and still have that same smirk – priceless.