Monday May 12, 2008
Over the top
By EUGENE NG
Kam...in Your Face was perhaps just entertaining enough without hitting spectacular highs.
Kuala Lumpur was all abuzz last week with the return of the reigning queen of the lewd, rude and crude – Joanne Kam Poh Poh. The immediate buzz, of course, centred on the name of her debut theatrical production, cheekily and tantalisingly titled Kam ... in Your Face at The Actors Studio in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur.
Now if your mind is swirling with naughty depraved visions, well, then you are probably very naughty ? and depraved. But you’d be forgiven, though, considering Miss Kam’s penchant for bawdy barroom humour and a reputation for persisting with at least one but more likely 20 references to human genitalia per show.
Yes, our dear Joanne can be utterly shameless, but when you have built your fame dancing with drag queens in sequins and feather boas during the Boom Boom Room heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, nothing is sacred anymore.
Kam...in Your Face is tagged as “a musical comedy cabaret” and, in some way, it was Kam’s attempt to hark back to those glory days at 11 LA, recreating those heady nights when just about anything went. As such, the show promised an evening of cabaret, stand-up, dance and skits, and as director and writer of the show – the driving force behind the production, in other words – her success rested on whether the Boom Boom stage formula could be successfully transplanted to a more sedate, more antiseptic surrounding under the watchful eye of DBKL.
The show starts off in true Las Vegas cabaret style, replete with dancers with colourful feathered tails, dancing to the tune of It’s a New Day (made famous by Michael Buble), sung here by Douglas Lim, and followed by Kam singing Steppin’ to the Bad Side. It was a visceral introduction for what was to come.
But what followed was pretty much a hit-and-miss affair. In the next segment of the show, Kam’s risqué stand-up routine had the audience eating out of her hand. She went full flow here and the jokes – and laughs – kept rolling.
Eye candy: Joanne Kam and dancers in action. Kam can be a true tour de force when she is in her element, and she was in her element that night. She had no qualms poking fun at numerous members of the audience (which everyone loved, really), and of course, making those now- customary genitalia references.
Two more dance routines followed, the first with Susan Lankester and the four dancers who provided eye-candy throughout the night when they attempted a burlesque pole dance sequence. If cabaret is to function as an over-the-top spectacle, this didn’t pass muster. It simply wasn’t “hoochie mama” enough and I would have certainly suggested that more leaves be taken out of The Sopranos Bada-Bing book.
But, OK, so this is Malaysia ... yada yada yada. So what? The Tainted Love routine which saw Joanne and the two male dancers go full throttle at some sado-masochist fetish-inspired routine fell somewhat flat due to the distinct lack of hetero-chemistry; it went further downhill with the, quite frankly, blah CSI skit.
Thankfully, Act One ended in a flurry of colour and bon-bons shaking all over the place in a raucous and riotous Bollywood dance sequence, which was thoroughly enjoyable and surprising in that it revealed that Lim could actually rap (gasp) and really well too!
But it has to be pointed out, still no spunky silliness was to be seen at this stage.
Act Two, however, never really hit the highs of Act One. The mish-mash of dance-skit-dance was all a little too schizophrenic, and a lack of cohesion only served to ensure that things flew over the audiences’ heads.
Queen of lewd: Kam was in her element, and had the audience laughing, blushing and itching to get up and dance. Sure, the YMCA song was a crowd-pleaser (when is it not?) and Joanne dressed up as a butch biker with handlebar moustache was worth at least half the price of admission, but otherwise Act Two was forgettable.
So as “a musical comedy cabaret”, Kam... in Your Face was perhaps just entertaining enough without hitting spectacular highs. It simply wasn’t enough of a spectacle (shouldn’t there have been at least an attempt at a fabulous set?), it could have been even more over-the-top, and there were too many obscure references (Streets of Fire? Like, huh?).
Still, people laughed, blushed, ogled and wanted to get up and dance. And after all that is said and done, everyone left with one question dangling unanswered up in the Actors Studio rafters: Where was the money shot?
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