Makan Drama Festival

Browsing the SISTIC events calendar brought to my attention this theatrical festival by Action! Theatre, which had an interesting concept/theme. So yesterday, I went with my friend to check out the double bill (“main course”), along with some free performances (“appetizers” & “desserts”).

The double bill included Perfecting Prata by Desmond Sim, and Cravings by Chong Tze Chien. The former was a short 20-min play, but a tad more serious and portrays the relationship between a father and his son. Cravings was pretty hilarious about how couple tries to plan for a passionate evening after the wife has given birth to their 1st child. I thoroughly enjoyed this as the script was well written and the players acted it out well, which had familiar faces like Jo Tan & Edward Choy, whom I’ve seen before in Awake with Nenek as well as Fanny Kee & Tony Quek. However, I think the “cravings” aspect didn’t come out as strong as the writer might have intended, although they tried to emphasize it nearer the end by mentioning the word a few times. I guess it was analogous, like how couplehood & marriage are like food cravings.
(sidetrack: I seriously think that Jo Tan looks like my friend Alicia, and I think I was schoolmates with Edward Choy in JC)

After the double bill, my friend and I proceeded to catch some free performances – Eat Here or Ta Pao? and excerpts from Hokkien Mee – The Musical based on Ovidia Yu’s play. I felt the Hokkien Mee musical wasn’t too bad (has some potential), although I think it’s more of the intro to the full story, which I believe would be the play out of the Cantonese girl who strives to earn the recipe from her mother-in-law. I don’t know how the full-length show will turn out though. I’ve not read the original play before.

And hearing it’s from Ovidia Yu, it made me recall her workshop during the Singapore Writers Fest last year of her perception of Singapore theatre. She referred Singapore theatre to a buffet spread and it made me wonder if she had any influence on the concept of the makan drama festival. Unfortunately, I’ve lost my notes from that workshop (think I accidentally threw it away during my CNY 大扫除…Arghh!).