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.
