Thursday, 9 November 2017

Short + Sweet Theatre Penang: A Completely Biased Review

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll say right from the start that I have stakes in this.

Not very high stakes, but some stakes. So yes, I am biased, but I shall try to be as unbiased as possible.

Now that's out of the way, let's begin.

What to expect in general:
A mix of everything. There's drama, comedy, and confusion. (We'll get to the last in a bit.)

I haven't been to watch S+S in a while so I didn't know quite what to expect. There were eight short plays altogether - half in BM, half in English. It used to be mostly in English with maybe one play each in Mandarin/Hokkien and BM (or something like that), so whilst I'm maybe sad that there were no Chinese ones this round (despite my comprehension of that being near nil), I think that this turned out to be a pretty good mix.

Overall, the scripts were biased towards drama-type shows, with two (clear) comedies, and one... that I couldn't decide if it was trying to be comedic or serious... which leads to confusion. Out of the eight, I thought four were really good, two were okay... and I don't know what to think about the other two. My brain pretty much just went ? ???? ???!?!

Last general comment: Accents, OMG ACCENTS. I really love the Malaysian accent, I do. Except when it makes everything sound so awkward. Like. WHY YOU ALL SPEAK SO CINA. I know you all are Chinese but don't be so cina can ah. (Speaking about two of the English plays. The other two were okay. The BM ones were pretty fine except one, where the loghat was a bit strong so I couldn't follow everything.)

Right. I'm not going to give a rundown of each play, but I'll highlight the four I really liked, in all its biasedness.

Happy -- of course I liked this. I wrote this. Well, I wrote it in English and they translated it into BM, and I still think it's awesome. I usually hate everything I write the more I read it (hahahaha) so having watched this twice (Tuesday at full dress and Wednesday at opening night) means that they did really well!

The Setup -- How can I not like this? It features Penang superstar names like Chen and Lucille Dass, so it can't go terribly wrong. Though, to be honest, Lucille wasn't quite stellar in this. I had questions about her weird overacting and blocking choices (though that's probably more a director thing rather than an actor thing).

Overheard at a Cafe in Taman Tun -- Of all the skits, this felt the most natural. It was also one of the most static, but the actors were strong enough to carry it through. A lot of listening, though.
(Note: LGBT themes if you're the squeamish sort.)

Death is Satu Permulaan -- Malay slapstick at its best. Just park your brain at the door and enjoy. The comedic timing was spot on.

Tickets are still available for shows on Thursday - Saturday, so do do do do dooooo go watch! And also come say hi. :D

Head to the FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE for more details.

1 comment:

  1. It’s definitely a director’s thing! 😅 Lucille is always stellar. Need to learn more about blocking and hope to improve next time. Thanks for the comments Anna!