Theatre
The Important Playlist
The Second Breakfast Firm
M1 Singapore Fringe Competition
Esplanade Theatre Studio, Thursday (Jan 12)
Do you have to clap to indicate appreciation for front-line staff? Is it truly of tangible profit to them? Or is it only a option to make you be ok with your self?
The Second Breakfast Firm units out to unpack the difficulty of performative versus sensible assist in its Esplanade debut, co-written by Zulfiqar Izzudin and Adeeb Fazah, who additionally directs.
It’s heartening to see a headlining spot on the M1 Singapore Fringe Competition, at a primary venue just like the Esplanade Theatre Studio, given to a younger theatre firm.
The play’s start line is a 2020 survey printed by The Sunday Occasions, which requested 1,000 respondents what jobs are most vital in protecting Singapore going. The listing of non-essential roles was topped by “artist” at 71 per cent.
4 millennial comedy content material creators, enraged at being tarred with the “non-essential” brush, resolve to rebrand by producing movies about “important” staff.
They rope in a nurse, Fatin, and a supply rider, Sam, by promising to inform their tales. However their self-serving efforts lead to superficial content material that backfires.
Whereas the play means effectively, it’s tough across the edges.
Watching content material creators snipe at each other grows stale in a short time. This group, dubbed the Lunch Bunch, vary from Amanda (Kimberley Ng), who began volunteering throughout circuit breaker and made positive all her Instagram followers knew about it, to the insensitive, callous Henry (Angeal Chong).
Danielle (Zara Sophia) complains at one level that she must make a “cringe video” about her co-workers. The Important Playlist is basically a “cringe play” that mines the behaviour of its disagreeable characters for comedian worth. However efficient comedy can not hinge on cringe alone.
Regardless of its auditory title, the play suffers from its sound design, mainly the annoyingly peppy and repetitive soundtrack that persists within the background of practically each scene. The forged typically wears masks, which rub audibly towards their mics.
Flamboyant present host Leon (Rino Junior John) retains power ranges excessive, particularly in a rap sequence that’s the funniest a part of the play.
In the meantime, the monologues by Sam (Misha Paule Tan) and Fatin (playwright Zulfiqar) present some much-needed perception into the struggles of nurses and supply riders, whereas additionally pushing for nuance in the best way they’re depicted.
The issue that The Important Playlist can not escape is that, as a murals by the so-called “non-essential” in regards to the “important”, it is usually topic to most of the challenges it ranges at these it parodies.
How ought to arts practitioners inform the tales of front-line staff? The place does saviour complicated finish and genuine help start? How can artwork impact real-life change – and is that the one metric by which it, too, could be thought of “important”?
The play doesn’t have all of the solutions to those questions. As a substitute, it throws them again on the viewers.
“Would you clap?” the actors ask the viewers mockingly on the finish. A disingenuous query. They’re actors. They positively need the applause.
