The sitcom returns to the stage

Published on March 4, 2008

Since opening its new playhouse, Muangthai Rachadalai Theatre, in May last year, house company Scenario has staged four commercially successful musical productions. The three local musicals, "Fah Jarod Sai", "Luk Khun Luang" and "Banlang Mek", all received the TV soap treatment, while "Cats" was an Australian production deigned for rural audiences in South Korea and China and unsuited to the more sophisticated Bangkok crowd.

This year, Scenario seems all set to continue its winning TV sitcom streak with stage comedy "Kwa Cha Theung Bang Rak Soi 9". And while the spectacular melodramatic concert - sorry, musical play - "Banlang Mek" set the company's record for the total number of performances, "Kwa Cha Theung Bang Rak Soi 9" - goes one better. This sitcom on stage is now, unofficially, the Thai play with the highest number of scenes, many of which, unfortunately, are dramaturgically irrelevant.

This is not because the set designer wanted to show his artistic and technical prowess, however, but because the five — yes, there are five — playwrights simply didn't understand the differences between stage plays and TV sitcoms.

An extra trip to any university library or drama department to study works by such masters of stage sitcoms as Neil Simon would have revealed that audiences have less empathy with plays with too many scene changes and that theatregoers learn the story more from the dialogue than the action.

This 130-minute, two-act comedy is a prequel to the popular TV sitcom "Bang Rak Soi 9", which has been running continuously for the best part of five years. Understandably at Bt2,000 a ticket, the audience expects a little more from the story than what they are seeing on the small screen.

The play attempts to explain, as simply as possible, how the repeatedly heart-broken architect Chadchen came to meet and fall in love with Pang, the education graduate who'd rather open a bakery and finally rent a room from her recently bankrupt family. But why do we also need to see what occurred briefly at a karaoke bar and a BTS station? And why are we being asked to believe that just five years ago there was a maze at a New Year's celebration party in front of Lumpini Park, that Bangkokians wrote love letters and mailed them to each other with the help of a bike-riding postman, and that the people of Bang Rak hung out on a pier over a polluted canal enjoying the reflection of the full moon?

Still, thanks in part to several witty and original jokes as well as to the well-honed timing of veteran comedians Ti Doksadao and Lueafuea Mokchok, we had a good laugh. Also, we did get to know a little know about the backgrounds of our favourite TV characters, especially Chadchen, performed by Saksit Thangthong whose down-to-earth charm won many hearts but whose speedy delivery of dialogues wore out many ears; and Pang, into which Piyada Akkaraseranee poured a great of natural sincerity.

Nevertheless, the play's over-repeated trivial messages withered away the minute we left the theatre. With the form and content so similar to a TV sitcom, shouldn't "Kwa Cha Theung Bang Rak Soi 9" simply been presented as a special episode on TV as the producer had originally planned?

And if Scenario thinks that, for live theatre, "what the audience wants to see" is far more important than "what messages theatre artists want to convey", then perhaps some of us should come out and admit right here that we would love to see a raunchy stage version of the year's most notorious TV drama series "War of the Angels" — with the original costume design, of course.

"Kwa Cha Theung Bang Rak Soi 9" performs daily (except Mondays) until March 16. Showtimes are 7.30pm, with an additional 1.30pm matinee on Wednesdays, and 2pm shows on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets from Bt500 to through Thaiticketmaster. For lower cost and equal fun, watch "Bang Rak Soi 9" on Modernine TV every Saturday at 6pm.

Next up at Muangthai Rachadalai Theatre are Scenario's musical adaptation of popular Thai novel "Khanglang Phap"; and the year's most highly anticipated production, Theatre 28's revival of the musical "Su Fan An Yingyai" ("Man of La Mancha"). More details at Rachadalai.com.

For better exercise of your imagination, check out "Babymime Show Vol. 1" at Pridi Banomyong Institute in Soi Thonglor this weekend at 2 and 7.30pm. Tickets at Bt300 and Bt500 from Thaiticketmajor. Visit Vrbabymime.com.

The writer can be contacted at Pawit.M@chula.ac.th.

Pawit Mahasarinand

The Nation