Very late on Saturday night I find myself drinking a cold lager and eating a bar of chocolate to recover from going to the theatre. As a drama teacher of eighteen years I have seen some pretty awful plays and have always, whenever possible done my level best to help make them, in the first instance less awful, and then, hopefully, better. Alternatively if they have been really awful I have tried to give them a speedy and painless death. Tonight though I visited a short play festival in Kuala Lumpur, at a venue which I am not naming to save blushes, with a colleague and it was really bad.
My colleague and I agreed that we should go, largely to support one our school’s students who was performing in one of the plays. Let me set the scene. The event was called Short and Sweet and gave writers, directors and performers a ten minute slot in which to showcase their talents and perform to an audience that included a panel of judges. The judges, along with votes from the audience, then decided which of the plays would then go through to the grand final. We were treated to eleven short plays which ranged from the ok / tolerable to the outrageous via the bizarre and many of them with lots of glitter. The first offering was “Extended Holiday” in which two aliens were apparently in the process of crashing to Earth. When the male alien realised he was Earth-bound and would not see his homeland again, a place where, if that cast’s costumes are to be believed, all inhabitants wear boiler-suits, shoulder pads and pixie boots, he decided that the best course of action was to suggest to his female alien colleague that they have sex. No glitter required. We were also treated to “Four Characters in Search of a Purpose,” where the Easter Bunny, Mrs Claus, The Tooth Fairy and Cupid all bemoaned their lot in life. Cupid wore the glitter, wings and carried a toy bow and arrow while Mrs Claus tried to write a letter to her husband. The same actress, a very misleading term, appeared in a later play as Mrs Lee, a Chinese pharmacy owner who sold a pregnancy test kit to a woman. The buyer then spent ten minutes arguing with someone who might have been her sister about whether it was right to tell someone that they have an ugly baby whilst revealing that she was pregnant. Mrs Lee stole the show by reading a newspaper upside down. Sadly it was the newspaper, not Mrs Lee, who was upside-down although had Mrs Lee been upside-down this would not have made the play any worse. After that promising collection the plays deteriorated.
Two people tried to sell a collector / dealer a pubic hair apparently owned by Johnny Depp in the straight-to-the-point play entitled “A Pubic Hair By Johnny Depp,” an apparently blind man argued with his former wife while he was sorting through the bones of his recently deceased best friend who was, by happy coincidence, her second husband; and then “Somnus,” a classic, where two people raced to see who could kill the other first set against a background of insomnia and also starring a tailor’s dummy named Emily who sported a flower print dress and seemingly ran a hotel.
The evening ended with “Talking About It.” As the lights came up the audience were treated to a semi clad and very camp actor and an actress in extremely practical undergarments panting and telling us that what they had just experienced had been truly amazing. They clearly had not been watching the previous ten plays. This fine couple then spent their ten minutes discussing their previous sexual partners and included a graphic description from the actress of the joys of anal sex. Parting on good terms the two agreed not to form relationship but to meet again some time in the future.
However I have chosen to leave the most memorable play, “Don’t Eat Me,” until last. Starting with a balletic sequence in which a white dress-, feathers- and glitter-clad actress had a go at dancing like a bird in tightly lit circle while her birdy mate dashed on a tried to seduce her. All seems fair enough in the animal kingdom but this male bird failed to convince wearing, as he was, a white swimming cap and black leather jacket covered in bright-red feathers. Following this fortunately unsuccessful courtship, I dread to think what their off-spring would have looked like. Following their exit a third bird entered. He was wearing baby blue feathers, stuck onto a denim jacket and a feathered and glittered Alice band. I knew we were in for a treat when the fourth bird came in, similarly dressed to the third, but with a guitar slung over his back. And I was not disappointed. The three males bemoaned their lack of success with female birds. I am sure that most sane people can see why. Swimming caps and feathered Alice bands are not a big turn on for female birds, surely everyone knows that? The pay-off of this fine play was very much in keeping with the set-up and build-up: all three male birds joined in a hearty rendition of The Proclaimers “500 miles” in an attempt to show how dedicated they were to trying to find a mate. It was quite the most ridiculous play I have seen, possibly the most ridiculous ever.
Thank goodness it is half-term this week. I will need it to recover.