BIBIKS BEHIND BARS, KENA AGAIN by Baba Richard Tan

“By Bibiks, For Bibiks”

Reviewer: Andre Joseph Theng
Performance: 7 November 2015

I enter the theatre to an audience dressed to their nines in nonya kebayas, and I know that I am in the right place. It is after all, a production for the inaugural Peranakan Arts Festival. Bibiks Behind Bars, an original musical by Richard Tan, is being restaged after its first run in 2002.

The music revolves around a group of bibiks (“aunties” played by Shirley Tay, Melvyn Chew, Catherine Sng and Jackie Pereira) who meet regularly in Joo Chiat for mah-jong games. Their appetite for gambling increases and eventually they find themselves at a casino, and end up running a “gambling den” at home. Interspersed between scenes of the bibiks are side-plots of passing down Perenakan heritage to future generations, and a romance with a police officer (Richard Chia) who arrests the bibiks.

I generally enjoy musicals and appreciate distinctively local musicals that we can be proud of. However, I have yet to find one other than Beauty World, and most of the other efforts are relatively amateurish. The story-line of Bibiks Behind Bars is rather shallow and follows a premise that is hardly true (“gambling is illegal”), at least not the kind of mah-jong games that they were playing at home. The singing is generally weak with the exception of Matheus Ting. The music is not particularly memorable either. Even the presence of Koh Chieng Mun, who played Judy Lui, a goddess of fortune and a life coach, does little to raise the standard of the show, and it end up looking like a Peranakan rehash of Under One Roof with the living room set. It is regrettable that the story-arc of preserving Peranakan heritage was not developed further, and was instead relegated to an on-stage lamentation of the loss of heritage.

Then again, perhaps it is unfair of me to speak so harshly about the performance, considering that it doesn’t try to be a serious musical production. It is something like reviewing your family’s Christmas programme featuring your young nephews and nieces. After all, most of the cast are Peranakan, and ditto the audience on the day of this performance. It has the feel of a family gathering. The audience seems to be having a ball of a time, and roar with laughter at each of the inter-language wordplays, of which there are many throughout the performance.

Nonetheless, Peranakan heritage is worth preserving and it is good that there is Peranakan culture represented on stage by someone other than Emily (of Emerald Hill). I can say that Bibiks does achieve that in talking about everything Peranakan – its food, expressions and an entire way of life.

As a side note, reviews of the 2002 production pointed out how the subtitles did not always match the dialogue, and the producers responded that this was due to some characters improvising their lines. On the SISTIC ticketing page for this production, it is stated that the production was in English, Baba Malay and Mandarin, with English subtitles and there are also references to subtitles in the programme booklet. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles at the show. I have to guess what is going on for much of the show, as it not only contains large portions of Baba Malay, but also Chinese dialects. It is a good idea to make such an important point clearer in publicity material, even if the producers expect majority of the audience to be Peranakan.