Italy has no Churches ... my review of Chestnuts 6.9

As many of you already know, I am a super big fan of Chestnuts. So after a 18 month hiatus, Chestnuts is BACK !!!!!!!!!!!!! 16^th August came .. and that was my first viewing of Chestnuts 6.9. I watched it again with my friends on the 18^th evening as well. I usually watch Chestnuts on opening night knowing that there will be some jitters amongst the actors as well as other technical issues. This is because this is when Jonathan usually bares all (not literally). After 2-3 shows, he will start trimming and making changes to the skits to make the show a lot better. Which explains why I watch it a second time. Ok enough about me .. more about the show …

There were at least 15 “segments” throughout the show. This is excluding all the minor video skits which serve as fillers while the actors do their costume changes and the production team does set changes. The show starts out with a song about what has been happening in Singapore since the last Chestnuts show. Jon’s witty lines could be seen as the cast sing about the recent sex scandals, money scandals, political scandals, Hello Kitty queues amongst other things. The lyrics were full of intended puns and innuendoes .. however it was quite hard to pick them up as they were sung very quickly. It was easier when reading the “subtitles” at the sides and there were video / photos on the backdrop of the specific subject. However it was difficult to try and view everything together. This made that skit lose its impact.

This was followed by a short video introduction of the guest actor… Tim. Scattered throughout the show, there were many short video clips of Tim serving National Service and how he took many of our local “lingo” literally.

The show then started on the main “Les Miserables” theme. The lyrics of popular Les Mis songs were given the Jon Lim treatment with a “skewed” undertone ending with a very passionate kiss !!! We were then treated to a local scene at a local toy shop. Other notable skit during the first half was the Phantom/Jersey Boys/Wicked/Addams Family musical skit. This was fairly entertaining though it could be seen that as much as the crowd liked the singing and the music, they were a bit lost with the Addams Family bit.

Theatre in 10 this year covered La Cage, Spring Awakenings, Romeo and Juilet, Othello, High Class, Army Daze and Cook a Pot of Curry amongst other local theatre productions. I felt that it was generally a bit ‘touch and go.’ There were bits which were genuinely funny but there were some which were downright “huh??? What was that about…”

First half ended with a skit showing the singing prowess of the main 4 actors. They were randomly given “Les Mis” parts to sing .. and were required to re-enact the Act 1 Finale of Les Mis. That means that each actor had to learn ALL 8 .. YES EIGHT parts and be able to sing it well and blend it well with each other. It was done well and deserved a standing ovation. The first time ... Judee Tan got Javert and Valjean which would have been super tough. In my second viewing, Jon got Cosette and Mdm Thenardier which was hilarious.

The second half of the show started with Jon’s parody of Ah Boys to Men. This was followed by the continuation of the Les Mis arc. This time it was Les Mis meets Wolverine. Tim played the role of Wolverine well. His body statute and size seemed to fit nicely into that role. However, I personally felt that this whole segment was very draggy. There were sub-parts which were unnecessary and though the concept may have been good .. the execution was in my opinion poor. It was not the acting or the singing which was bad but just something wasn’t right. The Judee Tan ‘body morphing’ was a very original idea but I felt a bit irrelevant.

The highlight of the night was the irresistible Judee Tan as Ivory Low in the Pondan News Network segment. Somehow without Rodney, it was a bit different (one of my friends was extremely disappointed that Rodney was not in it .. yeah you JACQ!!!) but I felt Dwayne did well replacing Rodney. Hopefully Rodney comes back from his Brazil trip soon. The Water Wally bit had me in stitches for the longest time … the Amy Chia bit was amusing but when Ivory came on … all in the audience were gasping for air after laughing so much and loud !!! Shingz to u all ... Judee is quickly growing into the new queen of comedy albeit from the Ah-Lian perspective. And what did she say to the rude old Auntie???

The show ended (2.5 hours later) with the re-make of “Do you hear the people Sing” with lyrics focussed on the 6.9m White paper issue.

Since my second viewing, I have read many reviews of Chestnuts 6.9. Many of the reviews gave it the thumbs up because of the wit of Jon in the lines and the difficulty in putting together so many singing roles and skits amongst such a small cast. To me, this is the minimum in expectation from any Chestnuts production.

On a whole, as per previous Chestnuts … there were segments and skits which connected and some which didn’t. The reason why some connect is because of the familiarity with the content and the context of the segment. Another reason why is that they are just downright funny and honest (Ivory Low). To me, after watching the last 3 Chestnuts productions, I was quite disappointed with Chestnuts 6.9. It was entertaining at times, it was funny at times but it was mediocre most times. There seems to be something lacking this edition which I cannot put my finger on. Eventhough 2.5 hours is good value for money, I felt that easily an hour of that was below the high expectation I have seen of Jon’s direction and writing. The humour here was more slapstick and less witty. I have mentioned many times in my previous posts that this kind of slapstick humour is what the Singapore public enjoys but we must be careful and stick to our roots and reserve the slapstick-ah-beng-dialect-in your face humour to the likes of the Hossan Show, Broadway Beng and Kumar. Don’t get me wrong. I am not atas. I love such bawdy, obvious humour which I get from watching Hossan and Sebastian on stage. However, I expect different from Jon. More sharp jibes about  the local scene …. about the haze and PSI… about the Hello Kitty queues … something about Gangnam style … about the immigration issues rather than Les Miserables. What is the overall theme of Chestnuts 6.9? Why 6.9 when that was only discussed about in the last 15 minutes of the show?

I think this review is Chestnuts 6.9’s first semi-negative review so far. No matter what, I still encourage all Chestnuts virgins to go watch the show. I also encourage all readers to please comment on this blog and tell me what are your thoughts about Chestnuts 6.9. Very much appreciated … Shingz to you Jonathan Lim ….