FAT PIG by Pangdemonium! Productions

“Fat Pig”

Reviewer: Walter Chan
Performance: 20 February 2014, 8pm

Have you ever exited the theater thinking, “WTF?!?”

Unfortunately that was my exact thought after watching Fat Pig, the latest offering from Pangdemonium Productions. Given the company’s solid choices of scripts over the years, Fat Pig seemed like a highly unusual misstep among past gems like Spring Awakening and Next To Normal.

But I guess if you’re hankering for some ang moh theatre, accents and all, and prepared to fork out at least $30, then this show is for you. No need to be ashamed though, Pangdemonium has built up a solid fan base thus far; you’re not alone.

Having said that, let’s cut to the chase here. Neil LaBute’s script, at first glance, offers a piece of biting social commentary that examines stereotypes and the forms of direct and indirect discrimination against fat people. Why is there a stigma attached to being fat? When did the word “fat” become an indictment of someone’s character anyway?

These questions make for great drama and Fat Pig did look the part, at least for the first scene anyway. Come to think of it, the first scene alone could have encapsulated the entire show. There was food (LOTS of food), a good dose of humor (involving all the synonyms for “big” that you can think of), and the feel-good factor of a romantic comedy.

It all went downhill from there, though.

The story kept constantly alternating between funny and tense moments, as if it couldn’t make up its mind on whether it wanted to be a romantic comedy or a serious drama. If the intended outcome of the laughs was to create a contrast to the serious moments, it backfired spectacularly: I couldn’t take the whole play seriously at all.

Never mind that we see more of Tom (Gavin Yap) than the titular protagonist Helen (Frances Lee), but the greatest flaw in the story comes from the characters themselves: The supporting characters of Carter (Zachary Ibrahim) and Jeannie (Elizabeth Lazan), together with Tom, come across as one-dimensional and irritatingly childish at times.

The perpetually indecisive Tom never evolves beyond the paradoxical paradigm of the emasculated Casanova (more emasculated than Casanova). His colleagues at work, Carter and Jeannie, come across as incredibly bullish yet incredibly self-centred, seeming to only be interested in making Tom’s life a living hell. And to top it all off, just when I thought that the (already stagnating) plot was about to reach its climax, the house lights came on and the cast came back onstage to take their bows.

Cue “WTF?!?”

I don’t know whether the problem was that LaBute’s script grew too stodgy towards the latter half, or if the American context (accents included) felt too artificial in the local context, or if it was the rather ambiguous ending, or a combination of all these factors

But let me make one thing abundantly clear (see what I’m doing here?): an ending that is open-ended is not equivalent to an ending without any closure. Yes, this is social commentary. Yes, you want to provoke a reaction from the audience. Yes, you want them to ask questions.

But not the wrong kind.

Like “WTF?!?”