My Story - Duo

Directed by Ms Atin Amat, who needs no introduction in the professional Malay theatre scene, ‘Gigi oh Gigi’ or ‘Teeth oh Teeth’ is such a pacey hilarious story that it is hard to watch it with a straight face at any point. There was always a funny event being introduced to tickle your funny bone. It also has historical elements such as the various campaigns held by the Singapore government ever since the launch of its first campaign ‘Keep Singapore Clean’ in 1973. Dalifah Shahril, the renowned theatre actress with more than 60 plays under her belt, is easily one of the most engaging storytellers around. 

The story, inspired by a true life event, drags the audience on a journey of chaos when Datin Lynn’s niece, Yani accidentally dispose of her newly-constructed dentures into the toilet bowl. As dentures take a considerable amount of time to be replaced, Datin Lynn racked her brain on alternative ways to solve her problem in the meantime. Her wacky ideas include desperately heading to a costume shop and buying the different types of fake teeth available to try them on. The story ends with Datin Lynn finally getting another set of new dentures after two weeks instead of supposedly a month’s wait. It was an important lesson for Datin Lynn as she realizes the importance of her teeth when she had to literally survive without them in that short period. She had been a heavy smoker and had to go through Gingivectomy, a type of gum treatment due to her poor care of oral hygience.

Although it was a monologue, the obvious transition of characters made it easy for the audience to differentiate between the main character and other secondary characters in the play. There was only one massage chair, a luggage bag and a mobile phone as props but those were enough to transform our imagination as the play progresses.

After a short ten-minute intermission, the play moved on to its second monologue ‘Sayang Musalmah’ or ‘My Dear Musalmah’ performed by Suryana Norddin and directed by Nabilah Moen. It was a stark contrast from the first play as it has a more solemn mood, starting off with the main character, Musalmah in a white telekong reading verses from the Yaseen after her mum’s demise. It is a story of love and forgiveness. A story about life and its final destination: death. As the main character deals with the grief of losing her father, she slowly matured and moved on to mend her broken relationship with her mother. As Musalmah’s relationship with her mother was just improving, she was delivered another blow when it was her mother’s turn to leave her in this world.

Suryana was able to emote convincingly enough and moved the audience to tears as we feel her devastation upon her mother’s demise. There could be a more distinct switch of characters although I can identify the different characters she played. The play has been cleverly directed such that the transition of a character occurs each time as the actress changes position e.g. from sitting to standing or from standing to moving to the chair. At some point, it was predictable when there is going to be a switch to the next character.

Since it is a double-bill of monolouges, I personally feel that it would have been better to have ‘Sayang Musalmah’ first so that the play would end on a ‘high’ with ‘Gigi Oh Gigi’. Both plays were performed in Malay with English surtitles at the Malay Heritage Centre Black Box.