Writer and Director: Su Su
Susie and Craig are getting married, and everyone is invited, only just before the wedding, Susie is going to discover that all is not well in her relationship. Of course, she has known that, and from the moment she tells the audience in the prologue that her now-absent brother and fiancé don’t get on, you’ll guess why. Su Su’s new play The Night Before the Wedding Day may not offer any dramatic surprises in the circular plotting, but there is real possibility in the Act One cliffhanger – what is Susie going to do about it?
The creative team behind this new show, staged at Theatro Technis ahead of a planned Chinese tour next year, has gone to some trouble to dress the venue and help the audience to play along. There are beautifully designed invitations and a wedding programme, Chinese gift bags and boxes containing sweets, even a wedding cake for guests to enjoy on arrival as the box office staff hand you a corsage. And the Theatro Technis bar is decked with garlands and wedding day decorations, presumably all down to scenographer Joey Haiting Zhou, ensuring that by the time the audience enters the auditorium, everyone is primed for marital dramas.
Su Su’s play promises much, giving away its big plot twist in the Director’s programme note, but it is easy enough to guess from the start, and so the audience waits almost an hour for Susie to catch up. The first part of the play involves lots of scene setting for the characters as Susie’s brother Lynn (Alun Qiu) returns and her fiancé starts to behave strangely. The immersion in Susie’s point of view is well managed, balancing the excitement about the wedding and having her favourite people together with murmuring doubts about Craig’s (Sonny Mihajlovic) commitment to the event.
But across a series of dinners, chats and more dinners, the plot starts to go round and round as Su Su essentially tells the viewer what is happening, then shows us, then tells us again which makes the story seem rather thinly stretched across its two-hour running time, promising a big revenge scene that peters out – the synopsis implies EastEnders-level nuptial fireworks but the reality is as pedestrian as a real wedding. There is some fun to be had with a ghoulish version of the lead called ‘Dark Susie’ (Yiqian Shao) in a red gown who stalks the protagonist as her inner monologue and tries to fire her anger but in the second Act Su Su gets a bit lost in the same sex love story and Susie fighting the patriarchy to really make the most of it.
The Night Before the Wedding Day just needs to restructure itself, and instead of chronologically rehashing the previous two weeks, it could instead use the intense emotions and latent drama of a wedding day as the whole setting for the story, perhaps cutting out to memories or flashbacks that bring Susie back to that crucial decision at the altar. Marian Lee really sells Susie’s dilemma, and the audience wills her to succeed, so rearranging the lens slightly would give her the desired agency. As with a real ceremony, it has taken a huge and thoughtful effort from the creative team to set the scene, but the wedding itself is disappointingly tame.
Runs until 29 October 2025
