When the past returns to taunt and threaten

AMONG the more than 100 plays he's written, Haresh Sharma's Fundamentally Happy is easily one of his best-written - and possibly one of the trickiest to direct.

So much is unspoken between the two protagonists: Habiba (Lok Meng Chue), a middle-aged Chinese-Muslim woman, and Eric (Timothy Wan), a young Chinese man who used to live nearby. Yet they know much more about each other than they pretend to - and much less about themselves than they think.

As the quietly shocking story unfolds, they will bicker, blame, accuse, outsmart and outmanoeuvre each other between polite smiles, occasional tears and silent sips of tea. It's a high-stakes parlour game as only ordinary folk know how to play - and they play it to hold fast to their facade of ordinariness.