Chesty Nutty Bang Bang: The Hairspray of The Phoenix Review
So I watched the Chestnuts production for the 2nd time. I'd previously watched Forbidden Chestnuts (blah blah, all these titles are too damn long), and it was fun, so my friends and I thought, what the heck, why not check out this one.
For background information, check out the Official Website and an interview with Jonathan Lim, the writer and director of the show.
However, this year's production, Chesty Nutty Bang Bang, is not as side-splitting as the previous adaptation overall. I attribute this somewhat to the lack of Hossan Leong as part of the main cast; the cast of 4 in the previous year worked splendidly, enabling the funniest scenes, and the guest cast were entertaining additions. However, this year, the main cast is down to 3, but somehow the writing was such that they had to use guest star Joachim Gomez to more or less fill in for a goodly number of the sketches.
Which is essentially the problem. This is Joachim Gomez's virgin stage production, and it shows, terribly. The Chestnuts series is invariably very campy fun. Whether heterosexual or homosexual, the cast is comfortable being outrageously camp. Except for Joachim Gomez. His role as a young Bangcock pole dancer was incredibly awkward, as the role was written as an eager boy performing, but his contortions were like following instructions: bend over here, slide down the pole now etc. He tried, but miserably failed, to swing it. This was slightly less noticeable in the other parts of the production, where he was located to the side in mass dancing portions, but as a solo performance, it was glaringly obvious that he was uncomfortable dancing.
The show was a series of hits and misses. Misses were namely the scene-changing skits. Last year used a series of outtakes from Brokeback. This year featured a Ribena scene which left me thinking "Was there a Ribena ad campaign that I missed?". Other misses were the Singaporean Heroes and their ERP-escaping powers.
The first skit was entertaining, though. It wasn't their best work, but I suppose that's the whole point. The only thing was that it was not clear at points what the lyrics were, but that's rap for you.
The Hairspray Potter sketch was quite bland, except for the face-off between Voldemort and Tracy Turnblad's mother.
But I must say that the last sketch, 88251 was hilarious. Even though the Annabelle Chong joke was carried just a bit too far, and the exposition on the 881A rather too long (although the attention to which it was given is understandable), the songs were the most hilarious tunes in the whole show. I really want the Horsua song to be my ringtone now. =)
All in all, it was a good performance well worth the time and money. But, like the previous year, it had its hits and its misses. One can only hope that in future they have more hits and fewer misses.