Throughout the first act, I was appalled. It was not the bad acting, but I was disgusted by how they were trying to dictate what family values are; heterosexual hierarchic Western ideologies on what families should be. You have the infamous skit called Lost In Transmission, where you get an insight into how "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus". What a load of crock. First of all, it stereotypes how women are emotional and are in need of constant attention whereas men are emotionally stagnant in relationships and need to be constantly reminded that they are in a relationship.
Then you have the whiny couple, who got married; the husband being the provider and the woman being the naggy emotional baggage that everyone seems to hate carrying. Repeating the lines "You've changed" about ten million times is excruciatingly painful for the ears and to watch the dramatic skit unfold itself is painstaking for the eyes. It was extremely cheesy and if I could, I would puke and shit at the same time on how bad it was.
Bad actors! Shame on you. You ought to be spanked.Oh no. It doesn't stop there. If you think the first act was bad, I stayed till the end of the second act. It got worse from there.
You have a reworked blog entry by a guy from Singapore who's father had cancer. They reworked the entry (I hope they got permission) and called it I Am My Father's Son. It was a futile monologue that did not engage with the audience at all. On top of that I was so angry that they reworked someone else's work and put a storyline into it. YOU DO NOT DO THAT. That is just plagiarism and bad script-writing. Plus the creator pumped in words that were loaded with sympathetic connotations in order to captivate the audience. It sucked. Trust me, it really sucked.
Last but not least, you would think that there would be at least a little bit of artistic direction into this play, but no. There was not. They over-utilized the Hollywood feel-good movie blockbusters and had other stuff like the 30 year old woman who wanted her father's love and the girl who was angry at her mother for leaving the father and had cheese-filled lines like "I forgive you Mommy", just think of Britney Spears in Crossroads and you would get the idea.
This is the cherry on top of the icing, they used the phrase "I Love You" over 50 times. If I had learned anything from Writing 101 it was to Show and Not Tell. Now that is just bad writing and rude to deep-throat an audience for 110 minutes with "I Love You"s.
Since today is the last day of the play, I can't exactly advise anyone not to go anymore, but I would advise no one to go to another play directed, created OR produced by Colin Kirton.
No more abuse please Mr Kirton. My mind can not fathom how you created such atrocities.
2 comments:
Wtf, man… if this is the same play I went for (yes, it is), I can only say that u are either [1] a heartless bitch, [2] heterophobic, or [3] have a personal vendetta against the producers of this show. Or some combination of the above.
Me and some of my other gay and lesbian frens saw it last Sat and we 100% loved it. Damn funny and damn serious oso. Yah, yah, no gay stories in it. But so what? There are more str8s than gays in the world lah. And anyone can identify with the issues in the play whether they are in gay or str8 relnships. U make it sound like the whole play was homophobic or something. Everything u said is so exaggerated, e.g. “You’ve changed” – I can only remember those words being said like 1 or 2 times. Then u accuse them of plagiarism from that blog entry when u already know that they got permission from the fella who wrote it and kept it true to his experience. It says that in the program book lah. U obviously read the program book if you knew it was taken from a Singapore blog, and yet u can spitefully accuse them of all that stuff. YOU DO NOT DO THAT.
There was no dictating of ‘family values’. They just showed wat people are like in relationships and made us think about it. The only values communicated were good universal values like love, forgiveness, better communication, etc. If u hate those things, like I said, u are heartless or really f***ed up, man.
U also ketuk the acting, which we thought was really good. OK not perfect, but not at all like how u describe it. Actually compared to many other local theater shows I’ve seen, this one was high standard already. U can see everyone’s enjoying the show, so I donno why u couldn’t either. OK, I know art is subjective, but if u don’t like something, no need to exaggerate and paint this kind of picture lah.
Anyway .... I wanted to say a lot more, but I think that’s enough already about the play. What I really want to say which I think is more important is this .... We gays always say we want str8 ppl to respect our diversity. U were involved with Seksualiti Merdeka somemore. U should know better than to write this kind of unfair hateful stuff against ppl who think differently from u. We always say ppl are homophobic but sometimes we can be heterophobic. Just as bad, maybe worse, cos we are supposed to know better. How lah to build bridges with this kind of vindictive unreasonable attitude? To me, your blog post is a greater atrocity than this play u didn’t like.
Justin C.
Dear Justin C.,
Thanks for your comment. If you enjoyed the play, that's your business, not mine.
This is a blog entry, I am entitled to my own opinions. I said that the writing was atrocious. If you enjoy watching cheesy plays and bad writing then rave all you want about it on your own blog.
And do not accuse me of stating that the play is homophobic. I merely said that it was geared towards a stereotypical heterosexual ideology. I know you enjoy bad writing and probably cannot seem to read between the lines of what I'm trying to state. That's your prerogative.
I do not condone such acts where expressions of the soul are modified to cater to the masses. Go read the blog and do your research instead of reading the programme before you comment please.
Good communication does not come from bad writing. It's about connection between two people. I certainly did not see a connection throughout the entire time. Good for you that you managed to capture the "wonderful-ness" of the play.
I do not need to justify whether I am open or not. I think that's up to people who know me to point out. If you want to attack me by calling me names it's fine; maybe I am cynical and probably deserve to be called a heartless bitch. But know my life before you point your witchy-poo finger and impose your holier-than-thou attitude on me.
You see...ignorance is bliss. Stupidity is a force of nature.
Thanks again for taking the time to read my blog.
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