Buttons In The Bread

Event: “iChestnuts 15” by Stages
Venut: Jubilee Hall, Raffles Hotel
Run: 5th Jan – 21st Jan 2012

A Good Ol’ Roasting

It’s kinda amazing when you think about it – the “Chestnuts” spoof comedy franchise has lasted for 15 years, and on this 15th anniversary of the show, “iChestnuts 15” goes the whole nine yards in reminding us how far they’ve come by interspersing the show with reenactments of a choice scene from each of their past 14 shows.

The show was part current-affairs spoofing, part retrospective – a celebration of the long and proud heritage of this most precious of local theatrical comedy franchises.

“iChestnuts 15” is clearly a testament to the genius and tenacity of Jonathan Lim, who remains the lone common factor in the show’s storied history, for were it not for his brilliance in writing, directing and acting, this show might hardly have been able to survive for so long.

The current iteration of the show stars Jonathan himself, Rodney Oliveiro, Judee Tan, Dwayne Lau, and Judy Ngo, who was the only one not present in the previous episode.

New topics which the show covered include a chunky segment called “Into The Booths”, which was a mash up of last year’s Dream Academy production of Sondheim’s “Into The Woods” and the General Elections.

The opening segment of the night was a spoof on recent local army horror movie “23:59”, and even if you did not catch the movie (I didn’t), it was still highly entertaining in its own right.

The musical “Wicked”, of course, makes an appearance too and I very much enjoyed Judee Tan’s strong rendition of “Defying PAP”.

I thought the vocal work was marvellous.

The “PondanNewsAsia” segment, now a staple in the show, makes a return once again and it is without doubt that the highlight of this segment – and maybe even the highlight of the entire show in fact – was the cameo by “Ivory Low Ai Kiu”, played by the inimitable Judee Tan.

Judee has a knack for stealing the show with her indelible comedic performances, for example, in shows such as “Chestnuts 3D” as well as the 2nd and 3rd episodes of “The Hossan Leong Show”.

I’ve heaped so much praise on all her past performances that I’m starting to run out of superlatives and of ways to say things in a fresh angle.

Let’s just say that she is one of the main reasons why I continue to look forward to shows such as “Chestnuts” and “The Hossan Leong Show” every year.

The regular “Theatre in 10” segment was highly entertaining (if you were familiar with the productions being spoofed), and I liked how they took the Karen-Tan-in-To-Whom-It-May-Concern gag and ran with it the entire segment.

The only dud of the evening had to be the segment called “The Amy and Ah Mee Show”, which fell curiously flat, considering the material in all the other segments were generally of a very high quality.

I suppose it could be attributed to the fact that the audience was hardly familiar with who the “Amy” was supposed to be, and also that the whole “Yam Ah Mee pursuant” thing has more or less run its course by now…and it wasn’t really even that funny to begin with.

Or, it could be due to the fact that our audience last night (it was a Tuesday show) was, how do you say, rather modest in size?

(I’m guessing it was around 40% capacity last night.)

Comedy is very much the performers feeding off the energy from the crowd and vice versa, but sad to say there was hardly much energy in the Jubilee Hall last night.

The level of writing in “iChestnuts 15” is astounding to say the least.

Jonathan Lim is a master of wordplay par excellence.

It is amazing how he is able to find puns or wordplay opportunities in the most unexpected of scenarios.

Also, we have to once again acknowledge the superiority of his lyric-writing abilities.

The way he is able to take a popular song, and fit in a whole new set of lyrics which not only make wonderful comedic sense but rhyme perfectly at the same time…wow, it’s hard to see how it can get any better than that.

However, I do suspect that often times the writing in “Chestnuts” is so incredibly clever and the references so esoteric that a lot of it is lost on most of us.

But that’s just the way “Chestnuts” is.

At 2.5hrs, “iChestnuts 15” practically guarantees a night of insane comedy and laughter.

With Jonathan Lim at the helm, you can be sure you’d always get your money’s worth and more.

There is simply no other spoof comedy show in town currently that comes close to what “Chestnuts” has achieved or is able to achieve.

It has been 15 years and counting, and at the rate things are going it is unlikely that the franchise would have any reason to want to end anytime soon.

Event: ‘iChestnuts 15’ by Stages
Venue: Jubilee Hall, Raffles Hotel
Run: 5-21 January 2012

It’s been more than a year since I visited Jubilee Hall for the last “Chestnuts“ instalment and it was hilarious! Jonathan Lim never fails to push your right buttons when it comes to humour.

With the watershed elections of 2011, it was inevitable for the show to not have that included, and in great abundance with “Into the Booths” (spoof “Woods“) which took a rather huge segment, including the post-intermission opening sequence – “you thought that it was over?…back to the booths with the PE”. Haha…how coincidentally apt. And not without a mix of Wicked spoofing, with the tunes of “Defying PAP” and “Popular” (or “PAPular”?), i.e. Nicole vs TPL (no prize guessing who’s “Glinda” and who’s “Elphaba”). And the “princely duo” from Woods, couldn’t be forgotten with their dilemma of who to vote for. The “agony”. I still recall the scene when they had to flash a slide because the audience didn’t get the initial reference to the “citizen”. And in relation, an inevitable dig with “The Yam’s Speech” segment (King’s Speech), of our favourite returning officer, complete with cup noodles.

As it was the 15th anniversary, the show format included a recap of some of the highlights in Chestnuts history including the amazing reprise of alternating between Home and 《请你告诉他》. However, I think I particularly liked the Matrix segment, drawing, I believe, from the train station scene in Matrix Revolutions (somehow I never got round to watching both Reloaded or Revolutions in full, so hope I’m right!). I didn’t watch all the Chestnuts instalments, so it was a good look at what happened before, but not without some refresh of content I believe.

As a quick theatre rundown of the productions in 2011, one could not forget our most hardworking actress ‘Karen Tan’ whom Judy Ngo played. Capitalising on the “split personalities” from the monologue “To Whom It May Concern“, “Karen” takes on many roles. I could hear someone behind me saying, “Karen Tan again?”. I could well identify with all the shows they enacted since I watched all of them except for Kuu. “Feedback” anyone?

And with the surge of K-pop culminating in 2011, our dikir barat 3MM might really hold their own!

One of the funniest segment would have to be the Pandannewsasia segment. The Singapore team swimming trunks saga and Equus were mentioned, but nothing beats Ivory Low Ah Kew (“Low IQ”), this time with her SISRIS app for iPhone 4Ass, and not without audience participation. Honestly, if I had to converse with someone like that, I would be super frustrated, but it was simply too funny here!

In a ‘dramatic ending segment’, the spoofed opening sequence of Lion King was super funny too and there was born a merlion at the Bay with our own The Little Mermaid.

There’s too much to cover like the ad placements for sponsors, the SSO Nokia ringtones, etc. and even if I didn’t get some things, who cares? If you need a good laugh, go get tickets now. It made me forget myself for that moment. However, I must say you’ll appreciate the spoofs more if you had caught or known of the staged or screen productions that the production draws on (as with all spoofing productions), and also if you’re familiar with the Singapore context.

Crazy Christmas this year kind of started on a more sombre note, even before it opened. First came news of RJ Rosales’ untimely death early in the month, who had totally mesmerised me in last year’s Crazy Christmas. This was followed shortly by the announcement of Emma Yong’s withdrawal from the show due to a relapse (with Denise Tan replacing her as one of the Dollies this time). So it was not without the heartfelt significance of what it truly meant to appreciate your loved ones, especially heightened during this season. Rest in peace RJ and get well soon Emma.

Personally, I felt that though not all the segments packed a good laugh for me, the sharing and support on stage were priceless as we saw the cast come together as friends to put up a good show for fans, friends, families and all who came. In retrospect, it was sweet as the cast reminisced of how they first knew each other and how far Crazy Christmas has come.

One of the highlights of the evening for me included the Dim Sum Dollies segments, with some witty writing. I especially liked the “Five Stars Arising” reference. Though it was a bit different without Emma, I think Denise Tan did quite well with her own style.

Then there was the return of the Bat Girl, Pam Oei, though she was genetically re-assigned as a bunny due to “hard times”. Ha! The Bat Girl segment was also one of the highlights for me last year, and Pam was pregnant then. She was funny as only Pam Oei could be funny and I can’t imagine anyone pulling it off but her.

My favourite segment would have to be “Broadway Beng : Pink Santa cum God of Wealth”. Not just because I’m a fan of Sebastian Tan, but it was by far the funniest segment for the night.

And Vocaluptuous’ guest reappearance this year added that a capella charm to the performance. I was very charmed by them last year too! And I think they’re really good. The special section by John Lee where he sang “There For You” (okay, I don’t really know the name of the song), a song written by Andrew, his brother, was one of the most touching moments for me. A very nice song, and really apt for the season.

And I also enjoyed “12 days of Christmas”, which was great fun, arranged by John for the main cast.

One point though was that Kumar’s segment didn’t really cut it for me. Maybe I’m a bit slow, but some of the jokes fell flat on me. Ah well, all in good cheer.

The show ended with songs dedicated to RJ Rosales and Emma Yong, which rounded up the whole performance on a note of love and care.