Story Of Fullerton Hotel - Theatre-Style

IF THERE'S ONE reason to sign up for Fullerton Hotel's 90th anniversary roving theatre show, it would be Auntie Rani. The hotel housekeeping character (played by gender-bending actor Dwayne Lau) preens, pouts and flutters her eyelashes furiously as she explains how she cleans a room.

''Draw the curtains to the right, to the right. Draw the curtains to the left, to the left,'' she trills as she shakes her hips to what sounds like a Bollywood soundtrack. ''Don't I remind you of Aishwarya Rai?'' she asks as she flashes her klieg-light eyes on the men. The dance ends with her turning a bedsheet into a swishy sari she twirls around with.

Her whole comic act is heightened by the fact that the room she's cleaning was Singapore's first finance minister Goh Keng Swee's former office, now a hotel room on the seventh floor. You wouldn't know this piece of history, of course, until Auntie Rani tells you so, amid murmurs of ''oooh'' and ''aaah'' from the tour group as if on cue.