House
of Flying Chestnuts lived up to its legacy and delivered a massive
truckload of funny. A spirit of madcap irreverence permeated the over
two-hour long show, with the frenetic pace onstage showcasing the newly-built
chemistry between jokers Jonathan Lim and Hossan Leong; the pair's abandonment
of restraints such as taste and politeness (darling, they're so passé!)
was a breath of fresh air.
In the spirit of unforgiving Chestnuts humour, no one was
spared in the quest for comedic truth-telling. Not content to ridicule
the Singaporean theatre scene for its pervasion of camp actors and general
artistic lifelessness, Chestnuts brutally spoofed government
campaigns, hit movies, celebrities and advertisements such as the one
for Yun Nam haircare. There was a little something for everyone, from
those in the theatre clique to the man on the street - perhaps
this universal generosity was the closest Chestnuts ever got
to the spirit of Christmas.
The spoof of Kill Bill Vol. 2 pretty much set the stage for
the rest of the show. It was something most arts-goers would cringe
to admit was funny with its liberal use of men in drag, dialect and
bad gongfu. There were other corny but hilarious spoofs, like the spoof
of Zoe Tay's community service advertisement to "exercise just
30 minutes a day", and the "Minister Mentos" that saved
PM Lee's rally speech.
On a more traditional, theatre-centric note, there were repeated pokes
at W!ld Rice and its tendency to spend lavishly, employ the same flamboyant
actors and pay little attention to other aspects of its performances.
Flippant jokes about W!ld Rice's cross-dressing artistic director struck
a chord with those in the audience who had unsuspectingly bought theatre
tickets to a drag show once too often. Further insights were displayed
in the "spoof list" of this year's productions. Lim and Leong
hit the nail on the head with takes on W!ld Rice's Visit of the
Tai Tai, Checkpoint Theatre's Opiume and TheatreWorks'
Ma: Moment.
The fictional Silver Ribbon Project spoofed, predictably but successfully,
the sentimental preachiness of the Yellow Ribbon Project, with guest
Karen Tan playing an actor being rehabilitated into mainstream society.
Jonathan Lim's deadpan narrator and Tan's wide-eyed loony were worryingly
believable. And did I also detect a barely-voiced allusion to society's
rigid mindset about those among us who are different?
Towards the second half, as audience exhaustion began to set in, it
became clear that House of Flying Chestnuts was dropping the
ball with a number of weak skits in the generally strong mix. While
the attacks on the local theatre scene were generally dead on, the cheaper
shots (like seeing Hossan in drag insulting Jamie Yeo for the nth time)
were unnecessary stocking fillers that added to the length of the programme.
These mediocre spoofs also gave the show an air of haphazardness -
somewhat like that of an assembly-time class skit.
This was a pity, since a little more editing could have elevated the
show to the level of classier satires such as Atomic Jaya and
The Dim Sum Dollies. Perhaps the Chestnuts duo should
reserve their claws for more theatre spoofs, since no one else does
them with such relish and thoroughness. |
