Actress and co-playwright Sylvia Chang said in an interview that she had poured her entire life's experience into this play, and this solid production showed her ambition and reach.

It is set in an office, where retrenchment looms in the wake of an escalating financial crisis. The office drones are ruled by a manipulative female chief executive played by Chang, who wants the company to be publicly listed despite the bad times.

The immaculately dressed characters, who look like they walked out of a chic, understated lifestyle magazine, play elaborate games in the office - and bedroom - to get what they want.

But like the hungry characters in it, Design For Living wants to be more than about office politics. It also wants to say something about the nature of human ambition, disillusionment and the sacrifices one has to make for power and success.

This becomes the play's strength and also its weakness. On the one hand, there is an unmistakable grandeur about the play - it is more than three hours long, beautifully staged, and a representative range of characters join and collide in this urban jungle.

This is helped by a stunning set which fills the whole of the cavernous Esplanade Theatre. The gigantic pinewood structure with steps leading up to darkness simultaneously evoked an office lobby, the hierarchical corporate ladder and the steps to a temple of commerce.

Hong Kong director Edward Lam's vision of the workplace is characterised by frenzied movements, the frantic clickclacking of heels, opening and closing of documents, the constant moving of tables.

It is a powerful vision, and he has orchestrated a sassy modern-day epic well attuned to the rhythms of the affluent society of our times.

On the other hand, the 'office as urban jungle' trope, where the big fish eat the small fish, is not new. Chang's script, while smart and sassy, sometimes lacked subtlety and relied on stereotypes.

For example, the idealistic newcomer played by Taiwanese heart-throb Joe Cheng is unimaginatively called Li Xiang, the phonetic equivalent of 'dream' in Mandarin. The character turns out to be a cliche - his aspirations in his job application are to be an astronaut or philanthropist.

Chang's background as a screenwriter shows here too, in some cinematic quirks. She relies on a narrator to describe her characters' feelings like a voiceover in a film, which can be clever and wry at times, but mostly grating. There are also huge dashes of melodrama and an over-emotional soundtrack.

Some fat could also have been trimmed off the running time, which was worsened by two technical faults that caused the production to have two extra intermissions.

Yet, the veteran actress' performance is well worth the price of entry. She was fascinating to watch as Zhang Wei, the dragon lady who is really a tragic and broken figure. She morphs continually, from a wily old snake with the silky, menacing voice, to a master strategist, and finally a vulnerable woman unable to trust and love.

David Wang is her match in the acting stakes, playing an over-reaching, seductive young man who is his own ruin. Heart-throb Joe Cheng, however, mistook acting like an overgrown child for idealism and innocence.

It has its flaws, but Design For Living has the breadth and pathos of an operatic tragedy, with big emotions and big statements about the state of modern life. Its revelations may not be new, but it brings them across with compelling, vivid intensity.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Feb 2, 2009.