“Staged like a vintage pop-up book”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 21 November 2015

It is simple and straightforward: light entertainment for the young ones and the families.

I thought I would be greeted with a colourful, candy-licious house, like one out of a Hansel and Gretel’s story, but no, the set is mundane. It consists of a rustic farmhouse, a wooden chair, and a few steps of Mr Diggory’s garden.

This set looks like a classic pop-up book.

I am surprised to see Ebi Shankara as Mr Diggory in a children’s play (having only seen him in serious roles in Pigeons and Off Centre). Here, we see the cheeky side of him when he interacts with the young audience. Alecia Kim Chua plays Mrs Diggory, a heart-warming motherly figure. Ghazali Muzakir puppets Tomsk, the Cat. His feline character is not unlike the ‘Talking Cat Tom’, which is a popular interactive app with young children. Elizabeth Loh’s cute, squeaky rendition of tiny Eek, a Mouse wins brownie points with the young crowd. The cast is strong, and definitely more than qualified to give any audience a great performance. We see the puppeteers handle their furry counterparts with great attention to detail.

This 50-minute play also successfully engages the children with some interactive calls-and-responses. The cast receives overwhelming replies from the eager crowd. In the last act, countless hands shoot up to volunteer to pull out the enormous turnip. Mr Diggory must have had a tough time taking his pick.

Amidst all the fun and games, I have my reservations about the values behind this adaptation. Mr Diggory is portrayed as a rather reluctant, lazy farmer, who sits around dreaming to win the enormous turnip prize. By chance, he receives a few enchanted seeds from a magician. Later, Mr and Mrs Diggory reveal their excitement for winning the enormous turnip prize, in a rousing song-and-dance number, claiming that they will be rich! This is in contrast to the original fable, in which the old farmer is rewarded with a giant turnip due to his hard work. Eventually, he shares the turnip with everyone who has helped to pull it out. Sadly, I did not see the idea of ‘reaping what you sow’ in this adaptation. The story seems to have been given a modern ‘update’ that upholds materialistic ideals.

On the plus side, the play does illustrate the value of ‘teamwork’, and all participation matters, including little Eek’s. The little ones are excited about going up on stage to help complete the story. It is delightful to know that at a young age, these children get to experience theatre as an immersive experience that encourages interaction rather than designating them as merely passive witnesses of the story.

“A puppeteer’s spin on a classic script”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 5 November 2015

A life-size dummy hanging on a noose greets us. Even in the dim light, one can clearly make out its silhouette. On the floor, four other bodies lay motionless. Each ‘corpse’ is ‘buried’ beneath a heap of white paper confetti that resembles snowflakes. After a while, they start looking like papier mâché mummies.

When the lights come on, three figures in black appear. Their faces are painted black, leaving a margin of skin bordering their faces, resulting in a mask-like feature. These three characters do not assume a clear identity in the play. They have no lines, except hissing echoes of lines spoken by the main cast. They sneer sinisterly and contort their bodies to project an eeriness of the ethereal world.  On a functional level, they are Kurogos, supporting cast that traverse between the fictional and the real world, working the stage business while maintaining neutrality.

After the three ‘spirits’ had a game of tug-of-war with the now-decapitated dummy, dismembering it into its component limbs, the ‘corpses’ rise. As the four bodies prop themselves up, the paper fragments fall off their bodies, trembling like loose earth – as if they were really rising from the dead.

These four ghoulish characters – Girl, Mother, Man and General – act as four lenses through which we view ‘war’. From their accounts, we see war from the perspectives of a nurse forced into being a comfort woman, a widow who lost her husband to war, a soldier receiving orders and the Commander who issues them.

Director Oliver Chong’s revival of The Spirits Play is largely faithful to Kuo Pao Kun’s writing, which also means there are no surprises in the plot. But I was relieved to see the directorial decision to splice paragraphs from the original monologues of the Girl, Mother and Man and reconstitute them into a series of exchanges. I feel that this combined account gives a more meaningful, multi-faceted picture of the war, rather than making the audience sit through 3 long monologues, which I imagine could be rather dry.

Veteran actor Johnny Ng, as General, distinguishes himself from the rest of the cast with his experienced vocal techniques to deliver long paragraphs of text. While I do empathise with the emotional wreck the rest of the cast is put through, their outbursts remain rather one-dimensional. Perhaps, this play asks for too much from its performers?

The play comes full circle as it centres on the theme of war and sacrifice. As it snows confetti at the end, mirroring the confetti under which they were buried in the first scene, we are left with the haunting question of whether these characters go through the same monologues and arguments each year, like an endless cycle of seasons. Do they have to relive the war-inflicted pain over and over again, like a torture in hell? The play is poignant and despondent this way.

Despite that, this play does not put too much emphasis on any particular war that happened in our time, which rightly makes it universal. It seems to claim that any war fought equates to the loss of lives, whether one is on the winning side or not. Any war story is just as woeful as another.

“The Struggle to Look Back”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 16 October 2015

Before one can move on, you need to sort out the clutter, tie up the loose ends and clear out the contents of your soul that have been weighing you down. It is a timely challenge Liu Xiaoyi has given his fellow collaborators in The Practice Lab to examine the clutter in their lives before they move on. That is done in conjunction with The Theatre Practice (TTP) moving on and out of their current site at Stamford Arts Centre.

Upstream takes the form of 11 monologues (divided into 2 groups, performed on alternate nights). They are composed of selected life events that resonate a theme significant to the performer. Tonight, I am watching 6 of the artists take the stage to confess their past traumas, struggles and regrets. What sets these narrative-performative works apart from a typical confession at a shopaholic support group? The answer lies in the dramatic composition.

Zee Wong first sets up a mysterious relationship between her and an inanimate object – a pensive bowl of water. I squirm while she unpicks her stitches, reopens her wounds and become vulnerable to the judgements of the audience. But as she drones on about the blemishes in her life, the engagement with the audience slowly wears off. Zee eventually reveals her black, painted palms, but her interaction with the prop comes albeit a little too late. Seconds before the light goes out, we see her reaching out to the bowl. Is she going to clean her tainted palms? Can she wash off the blemishes? Is she willing to get rid of those memories? Or perhaps, she just wants to throw the bowl of water away and carry on with her life.

On the other hand, actor Ric Liu decides to use his prop to its fullest potential. The white wooden chair, a signature feature in many TTP experimental shows, now acts as Ric’s pregnant mother, stairs, escape route and the sea. Although I feel that some parts of the monologue may have been overly animated, Ric has sequenced a good selection of events in a non-linear way. There are a few clever stitching of seemingly non-sequitar events. He then revisits the events leading up to his birth, and wraps up by re-enacting the close shave his mother had with a miscarriage. Ric questions his existence, and I think he still does not have an answer.

The most complete dramatic piece is presented by Felix Hung. She explores her difficult relationship with her father. It plays out as an analogy of the complex ties between Hong Kong, its colonial master, the United Kingdom, and with China. Felix deals with the topic of death and anguish wittily, using a comedic monologue. In presenting her stories to the audience, Felix takes on several roles, including a caricature of a talk show hostess. The act seems characteristic of Felix’s usual self – bubbly, whimsical and humorous. But beneath this strong and cheerful facet, lies her insecurities. Perhaps that is why she chooses to examine her self from a third person’s point of view.

Essentially, we must realise that some traumas become committed to muscle memory – they cannot be forgotten or forgiven, like how you will never forget how to ride a bike. The struggles make us who we are, and we simply must find a way to move on. In a way, Upstream can be likened to a forum theatre. This experimental series allows audience to gain access to the performers and realise that artistes, too, are of flesh and blood.

“A playful take on the Red Terror”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 4 September 2015

In the heat of our election rallies, candidates are addressing their audience in as many languages and dialects as they could manage to garner favour. It is thus delightful to see multilingualism being exploited for a greater purpose in theatre, as in Wang Chong’s Revolutionary Model Play 2.0.

His characters’ most intimate and personal opinions are performed in their mother tongues, intensifying their emotions. In the last scene, when Jiang Qing (played by Kathy Han) speaks to American biographer, Roxane Witke (played by Rebeka Sangeetha Dorai), she pours her heart out in Korean. To a Singaporean audience, the foreign language is likely to disorientate them. Since the audience is unable to comprehend what the characters are saying (unless we read the surtitles fast enough), we can only rely on the rise and fall of their voices. The rich intonations of the spoken language effectively portray their feelings. This approach highlights the meaninglessness of spoken words. It seems to signify that we, as outsiders, are not meant to understand what they are saying. Even if they were speaking in English, we can never fully comprehend their decisions under extreme political circumstances. It is like an intimate secret the character is sharing.

Wang Chong’s use of stage effects is refreshing. He managed to make it rain relentlessly for an hour on stage! A clever mix of rice and water results in a convincing wet and gruelling atmosphere, visually and aurally. Red calligraphy papers soaking in the puddles and water bombs of red colouring quickly dye the stage red, aptly portraying the intensifying terror of the Cultural Revolution.

We also witness one of Wang Chong’s signature theatrical elements – the juxtaposition of live feed and the actual play that is unfolding on stage simultaneously. At the height of betrayal of friendships and purging, four video cameras provide four angles to the exchange between Jiang Qing and her old friends onstage. It allows us to see the different facets of this historical figure through her complicated past.

When we enter the theatre, we are greeted by sampler snippets of the original model plays, projected onto a collage of Chinese newsprints. As the play comes to an end, the ‘Young Champions’ change out of their uniform and tear down the newsprints. With red blindfolds over their eyes, they rotate to face the audience. The protagonist Yu, acting as a stand-in for the actual playwright, joins in the mass, adding to the performance his role as the documenter. This seems to signify the end of the Cultural Revolution but there is a lingering thought that the impact will be felt through the following generations.

At one point, the play draws a parallel between Jiang Qing and Nora in A Doll’s House. Nevertheless, it is beautiful that, despite the plethora of insights provided during the play, Jiang Qing remains a charming enigma. She is only human after all.

“1 Table 2 Chairs”

Featuring:
Nothing (Ma Junfeng) &
Descendants of Eunuch Admiral – Was (Liu Xiaoyi)
Descendants of Eunuch Admiral – Is (Liu Xiaoyi)

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 31 July 2015

The concept of one-table-two-chairs is inspired by the traditional setting of a Beijing opera, in which various settings, ranging from a temple to a palace, can be depicted simply with these three pieces of furniture. This limitation appears restrictive but it also gives directors a free rein to express themselves and experiment with unfamiliar forms and structures.

Ma Junfeng does not seem too comfortable with a free rein though. He responds to this with a play titled Nothing and a rather cliché response, in my opinion. He borders a rectangular performance space with a thin red tape, where two performers take turns to enter and perform. Girl number 1 (Ng Mun Poh), bubbly and cheerful, explores her terrain, realising that she can burp pockets of air that floats and cut through the imaginary walls with her fingers to peer into the ‘outside world’. In contrast, Girl number 2 (Melissa Leung) seems to be always shouldering a huge boulder of ‘air’ with a solemn face. Not long after the girls accidentally stumble into each other’s alternate universe, they leave the demarcated space, and finally sit down opposite each other at the table. In the last few seconds before the lights go out, we see a symmetry – two seemingly opposites, staring into each other’s reflection. I reckon the piece cannot have found a better title, it literally was NOTHING much.

While Ma fumbles with ‘nothingness’ and ‘being’, Liu Xiaoyi deals with the dichotomy of past and present in an adaptation of Kuo Pao Kun’s Descendants of Eunuch Admiral, Zheng He. Zhao Yutao (who is due to perform only in the last play) enters to remove the red tapes, literally.

The play begins with a pre-recorded text from the original playscript, voiced by Liu himself, to set the story. In Was, we move through a flurry of abstract symbols characteristic of Liu, with Liu narrating the background information and voyages of Zheng He. Descendants is a play-text that engages many critical and pertinent issues: power, authority, duty, rootlessness and cultural limbo, to state a few. But I feel that Liu personalizes these issues with a decidedly humanist approach – centering his pieces on a reluctance to depart and a helplessness to affect change.

Another scene that leaves an impression is the juxtaposition of a Chinese performance tradition with an Indonesian soundtrack. Zhao performs a routine of stylized Kunqu Opera segment, clad in modern-day suit. It looks like he is dancing to the tune of an Indonesian folk song, Bengawan Solo. Despite the apparent disparity between the two, the juxtaposition works. Projected in the background, is text taken from a well-known Kunqu segment, 单刀会 (The Single-Knife Meeting of Guan Hanqing). Both text and soundtrack speak of a river that has flown eastward, never to return, exacerbating the melancholy & the helplessness.

As the light fades out, Zhao slowly turns his body around. He raises his finger at the audience, begging the question: Have you ever wondered if you might be a descendant of the Eunuch Admiral, Zheng He?

“A tribute to reminisce Kuo Pao Kun”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 17 July 2015

When the final rehearsal ended, Kuo Jing Hong walked off the stage to her sister, Kuo Jian Hong.

They hugged and cried.

Tonight, I am watching the play for the fourth time, having attended three of their rehearsals in the last two weeks*. I expect the cast will be slick and well-rehearsed and there will probably be nothing new for me to discover.

The black box is stripped bare by director Liu Xiaoyi to reveal the works of the theatre space. The atmosphere is sombre as the audience streams in. The actors are chatting lively at one corner of the stage. But the audience is unusually quiet today, eavesdropping intently.

The play unfolds as per the rehearsals. But I can feel the intensity from the participation of the audience sharing the intimate theatre space with the performers. We come to the scene where Jing Hong poses a question to Yang Ser Bin: Uncle, how did you guys get by during those trying times? There is a long pause in the middle of the sentence. She seems to be holding back a sob. I sit up, anxious for her next line to come. The audience must have sensed something wrong; all eyes are on her now. She manages to deliver her line, albeit a little late. Borrowing the words of Peter Brook, I believe the audience has ‘assisted’ the actor in some ways, causing her to offer something more than a repetition of the rehearsals.

If you are looking for an honest play based on the banned script, then you will not find it here. The director has no intention of putting up a play relating the struggle during the 1960s; he is more interested in finding out: so, what now? Years Later, after the incident of a play that was banned, what is left of that generation? What is the next generation doing? In the play, Yang says with a heavy heart that every generation has its own obligation. One cannot expect this generation to go through what the previous generation did, hence one also cannot expect this generation to make the same decisions or hold the same beliefs as the former did. The play that I just watched is a product of history – a result stemming from the play that never got staged.

Liu’s direction highlights the essence of humanity from Kuo Pao Kun’s script and brings that essence to a new audience. A strong spotlight shines onto the table where an adaptation of the original script happens. A margin of light falls off the edges of the table onto the floor. This highlights a border around it, beautifully framing this performance space. The light is so bright that it bounces off the surface of the table, and lights up the faces of the cast making them glow in an almost unreal fashion.

A microphone is attached to the table, picking up sounds when the actors interact with it. This sound design is courtesy of artist Darren Ng. Whilst Xiaoyi chooses to work with the symbolism of ‘paper’, inspired by the original playscript, Darren exploits the tactile motion on the table surface. Friction is cleverly translated into sounds that leads to a dramatic imagination of the industrial setting of the play. This setup allows Xiaoyi to present minimalistic account of the past struggle amongst the working class and relate the underlying humanistic themes to present day struggles.

“The curious case of the wild boar”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 8 May 2015

According to natural history, lions do not appear to live in the South East Asian region. So what was that animal Sang Nila Utama saw in the bushes? What animal is full of hair, bright-eyed and darts quickly through the woods? A discussion takes place between Grandfather Liu (Yang Ser Pin) and his grandson (Sun Ya Huan). The grandson carries on to suggest that the animal is in fact a wild boar and insists on correcting this grave misconception. The name ‘Singapura’ will have to be changed; the merlion will have to be replaced. The grandfather has his reservations.

“A mer-pig?!” Grandfather Liu exclaims in disbelief, only to be met with the nonchalance of his grandson.

“You’ll get used to it.”

This phrase turns up numerous times in the play, reminding us of change, or our numbness to changes. Han Lao Da’s crosstalk production preys on the desensitisation of Singaporeans to the perpetual changes in our pragmatic society – changes that seem inevitable, or so we are told. The storytelling takes place in the form of crosstalk banters, typically between a pair of performers or in a group, and sometimes, as a solo monologue.

This 2-hour long play brings us through, briefly, several significant events leading up to Singapore’s independence. These were told mainly from the grandfather’s perspective as a member of the “Pioneer Generation”. The play ridicules popular beliefs surrounding the founding of Singapore, alludes to a hilarious contrast between Singapore’s and Malaysia’s governmental system, and makes puns on the issues of new immigrants. But sadly, it does not delve deeper into these social issues. The mocking barely scrapes the surface and does not seem to add new knowledge to these familiar issues. Or maybe it is due to a lack of irony or contradiction that so often contributes to the desirable comic effect of a good crosstalk.

The stage is divided into two: the background – a raised platform, and the foreground, where the crosstalk takes place. A mysterious woman paces up and down, with her head in a lit birdhouse on the raised platform; whilst a well-illustrated animation, projected on the screen, introduces a change of scenes. The setting of the stage-front incorporates an element from traditional Chinese theatre – a one-table-two-chairs setup. This, I gather, is meant to focus on the performers, drawing attention to their craft. Despite a star-studded cast – most of them veteran crosstalk masters in their own rights – their presence hardly fills up the stage. The energy of the cast seems low and the comic effect doesn’t fully come through. Moreover, the video projection and the mysterious character in the background seem to overwhelm the foreground more than complementing the acts. It feels like a deliberate attempt to clutter the stage in order to mask its vastness.

Crosstalk is a traditional Chinese form of comedy. The humour is a safety frame which allows us to forget the seriousness of the issue only to remind us of it again later. It has potential to engage audience in deeper reflections of social issues but in a light-hearted manner. My first encounter with crosstalk play was Stan Lai’s Crosstalk Travellers in 2012. It was a refreshing mix of dramatic performance and a traditional art form that introduced me to this genre of performance.

Thus, it was with much anticipation that I stepped into the same theatre to watch Singapore’s very own localized crosstalk play. To my disappointment, the acts fail to leave enough room for introspective thoughts, as the humour applied comes across as shallow and superficial. Perhaps, if the pacing was better and there was a stronger command of the space, the entire performance may have worked better.

“Off Centre hits the bull’s eye”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 25 April 2015, 3pm

Faith Ng’s 2015 offering, Normal discusses stereotypes within our education system and what it means to be ‘normal’. Conversely, in Off Centre, written by Haresh Sharma, we see how director Oliver Chong envisages what it means to be different.

Siti Khalijah as Saloma and Ebi Shankara as Vinod skilfully slip in and out of their characters and doubling as narrators. This Brechtian split offers the audience some distance from which to observe and engage the two protagonists. Having said that, the distancing is not done at the expense of empathy. The two actors’ performances connected with the audience also on a concurrent emotional level. The many splinter narratives in the play are well dispersed, introducing peripheral characters strategically without distracting too much from the main characters. The audience attention is primarily focused on Saloma and Vinod.

Oliver Chong’s use of masks and the ensemble cast help depict the inner worlds of the protagonists. These intricately sculpted masks give a larger-than-life presentations of the main characters’ mental states. At certain points, these masked mascots parallel Vinod’s emotional triggers, amplifying the difficulties and dilemmas he faces on a daily basis. In my opinion, the masks are strangely reminiscent of some Robert Wilson’s characters in Peter Pan, but with slightly different impacts and effects.

The story progresses with Saloma’s becoming stronger and Vinod descending into madness. While the play began with Vinod’s solitary presence on stage addressing the audience directly, Saloma is the only one left on stage at the end of the play. She completes Vinod’s story for him, telling the audience that he is a free bird now (instead of the statue that Vinod has promised to be for Saloma’s sake). This juxtaposition of Saloma’s acceptance of her condition against Vinod’s denial gave the audience much food for thought. Oliver Chong’s Off Centre manages to hit closer to home than expected, given that most of us are probably unfamiliar with the ‘off-centredness’ discussed in the play.

The lingering question remains: Are we really that different?

“A patchwork of love”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 3 April 2015, 3pm

Flipping through the archives of Flying Inkpot, I came across a review of Emily of Emerald Hill staged by Wild Rice in 2001. The author lamented that he was then watching it for the first time, suggesting that it was a play worth repeated-watching. 14 years on, I would lament the same for myself. Stella Kon’s Emily has won first prize in the Singapore National Playwriting competition but was pronounced to be too difficult a play-script – given that it is a monodrama of 2 hours. So it was not until 1984, that Malaysian director Chin San Sooi took up the challenge and directed Leow Puay Tin to perform for the Malaysian audience. The debut gave rise to Chin’s founding of the Five Arts Centre. In the following year, Emily finally debuted in Singapore during the Singapore Drama Festival, directed by Max Le Blond where Margaret Chan breathed life into Emily, which was to become an icon in the history of our English-language theatre. Emily‘s next phenomenal milestone would be in the year 2000 when Ivan Heng redefined Emily in his crossover rendition, directed by Krishen Jit, inaugurating W!ld Rice Productions. For such a phenomenal play script, it is to my dismay that I am only watching it for the first time in my late twenties. It is, however, heartening to see many young children, accompanied by their parents, in the audience today, how lucky of them, I thought.

Stella Kon’s Emily is indeed demanding. It is a monodrama showcasing only the presence of one speaking performer while the audience collaborates in creating the other characters in their minds. In this iteration of Emily, Karen Tan is Emily Gan. She drives the play and its plot forward while navigating the audiences through the trials and tribulations of her life.

Aidli ‘Alin’ Mosbit’s Emily seems to place more emphasis to the theme ‘family’. Given the minimalistic stage design, she has chosen a thrust stage made up of several hexagonal platforms that resonates with the play’s thematic prop – the patchwork quilt.

What does it take to keep a family together? As the sun sets on Emily’s life, she accomplishes one last favor, incognito, for her good friend, Bee Choo. Then, she is left to her own devices in the grand house on Emerald Hill. In the end, she wins the battle against her husband’s mistress but is turned away at his deathbed; she coerces her first-born to give up his horse-riding dream to return to his law degree, only to receive news of his suicide later. Ironically, in order not to alienate and lose her daughter, Emily relents to her settling down in America. The feel of Emily reminds me of The Great Gatsby – the grand parties, the intrigues, the secrets. But after all the grand parties, intrigues and revelations, what is left for her? Karen Tan plays the resilience and fragility of a woman with great equanimity, revealing the irony that it is her fragility and fear of abandonment that drives her to seize power which ultimately drives her loved ones away.

The magic of Stella Kon’s writing lies in the way she managed to weave nuances of the Peranakan heritage with bits and pieces of the society’s progress into the context of Emily’s dialogues. This gives the director a lot of room to explore other themes embedded in the story, while still preserving the heritage elements to offer the audience a glimpse of the past.

“Let’s Bo Bo Cha Cha!”

Reviewer: Sam Kee
Performance: 14 March 2015, 3pm

The live band swoops in from the right in a blink of an eye, reminding me of the Cantina band in Star Wars – smooth and lively, but looking like they belong to a different time and space. The band is the main reason I enjoyed my siesta, my first in Resorts World Theatre.

Prior to the live band’s entrance, the stage stands as a museum exhibition displaying memorabilia from the foregone era of cabaret entertainment showbiz in Singapore. Young actors posing as visitors weave in and out of the exhibition before the principal show starts.

In the tradition of a cabaret show, a Master of Ceremonies hosts the show and introduces each item for the night. Simon Tay, (Shane Mardjuki) trots into the museum as an aged security guard, before travelling back in time and transforms into a glib-tongued emcee for this afternoon’s show.

So the exhibition and memorabilia disappears – the 60’s come alive. The opening number, Let’s Bo Bo Cha Cha!, is composed by Bang Wenfu and lyrics by Alfian Sa’at. We are subsequently serenaded with several nostalgic musical numbers, featuring the three iconic divas of Flaming Flowers: Queen of A-Go-Go Sakura Teng (Joanna Dong), Queen of Keroncong Kartina Dahari (Aisyah Aziz), and Queen of Striptease Rose Chan (Seong Hui Xuan). I am mesmerised by Aisyah’s rendition of Bunga Melur in traditional Malay folksong style, and then in Chinese. Also, we are treated to an eyeful when Seong was stripped of her glitzy qipao, revealing a nude suit with playful tassels.

Although the music and dance numbers are light-hearted and entertaining enough, it seems that the headline comedian of the day always manages to steal the show. Dr. Teo Chew Moi (Judee Tan) is up today, delivering her signature dose of ‘laughter is the best (traditional Chinese) medicine [TCM punning with Teo Chew Moi]’. She receives the most laughter in the house this afternoon, although I am not particularly tickled by her many innuendos, having experienced a more polished script in another of Selena Tan’s script: Happily Ever Laughter.

I remember cabaret being a popular feature in tour packages about a decade ago. Cabaret shows are also a permanent highlight in cruises, providing family-friendly entertainment. I would say the Great World Cabaret is more akin to this. I am not put off by the inclusion of several filler acts but unfortunately, these filler acts (including the Three Drunken Sailors and J C Sum’s magic segment) are rather dull fail to sustain the energy from segment to segment. The comical antics by the Three Drunken Sailors are decidedly lacklustre next to the heart-stopping feats from the Qing Dao Acrobatic Troupe. During the grand finale, though, it is interesting and heart-warming to see these foreign participants singing along to the words of Let’s Bo Bo Cha Cha!, hokkien phrases and all.

All in all, for an integrated resort wanting to bring “non-stop entertainment” to the people, the Great World Cabaret does work.