A family of women navigate a financial misadventure

The beginnings of The Necessary Stage's new play White, All White can be traced back to impressions of the colour: that of snow in faraway Canada and that of flour mixed into the noodles of a family-owned store.

- Clement Yong

But it is also the colour of panic, the blinding whiteness one experiences when overtaken by fear. It is as well the idyll of a blank slate, to which many people at one point or another seek a return.

Playwright and director Deonn Yang, 30, was toying with all these ideas for her new all-women play when she retroactively came up with the abstract title. For all its unifying qualities, she says it contains within it a cautionary intent.

“There's always an aspiration to be this. But is it good? Is that what we want? We need to have some cracks, some colours, some stains. That's what makes us human.”

White, All White stars theatre veterans Goh Guat Kian, Jodi Chan and Koh Wan Ching, as well as Co-co Wang, 25, and follows a family of three generations eking out a basic living until they suffer a financial misfortune.

It is on at the Esplanade Theatre Studio from Oct 24 to 27. Dialogue is in English and Mandarin with surtitles.