The farcical side of Thai politics

It won the best production award at the Bangkok Theatre Festival in 2009 and was also staged at Festival/Tokyo the same year. Traditionally, the Bangkok Theatre Festival takes place in November and because the floods caused it to be postponed to February, there is no further edition this year.

Instead, as part of Bangkok Art and Culture Centre’s inaugural Performance Festival, BTN is staging a Thai adaptation of Nobel laureate Dario Fo’s political farce “About Face”, or “Nang Na Mahaphai” in Thai. However, anyone expecting another “Sao Chaona” will be disappointed. First, not all members of BTN are participating. Second, it looks and sounds like another New Theatre Society production with guest actors from other theatre troupes rather than a true collaboration of BTN members.

At the helm of “About Face” is Damkerng Thitapiyasak, the artistic director of New Theatre Society and the most prolific director currently working in contemporary Thai theatre. In fact, he’s so prolific that his next production “Othello” is opening this weekend at Democrazy Theatre Studio. Damkerng is also a master of play translation, and he’s almost always able to make foreign plays, from any period, sound and look Thai and communicate the original playwright’s messages through his Thai adaptations. His adaptation of “About Face” is no exception.

“Nang Na Mahaphai” is set in a fictional Southeast Asian country that doesn’t want to join the Asean Economic Community. Damkerng has called his country Surabaya (Sura meaning whiskey and Yaba meaning metamphetamine), which made me laugh, as the two joined words seem to be a favourite in a certain AEC country. 

It revolves around Prime Minister Yingsak – an individual with a brother living in exile – who is saved from a car accident by party colleague Ananda (in an immediately recognisable outfit), who happened to be indulging in a little extra-marital bliss by the road not far away. Burned in the fire, Yingsak, who is wearing Ananda’s jacket, is mistaken for Ananda, and when Ananda’s wife Chintara and minor wife Butsaba show up at the hospital, they confirm that he’s indeed Ananda, and the surgeon fixes his face accordingly. The comedy reaches its climax when Ananda and Yingsak, now with very similar faces, return home.

In the weekend’s performance, Kriengkrai Fookasem cemented his status as one of the best actors in Thai theatre, portraying both Yingsak and Ananda credibly and incredibly differently. He was well supported by Janya Thansawangkul’s Chintara and Pariya Wongrabieb’s Busaba, whose characters were polar opposites yet matched each other perfectly.

Thanks in part to the fact that Italy’s politics are almost exciting as Thailand’s, not least due to the level of corruption, the play is relevant in the here and now. “About Face” is a farce – the lowest and also the funniest form of comedy – and so anything can happen on stage just for laughs. This is just like politics, where anything can happen for power and profit but from there I’m not sure what it becomes the lowest form of. 

Damkerng and his cast members fittingly stayed true to this spirit, disregarded logic and kept feeding the audience with jokes, most of which succeeded. However, the pace occasionally dragged because of the jokes and the running time of about 100 minutes without an intermission could have been significantly cut.

  LAUGH ON

n “About Face” continues until Sunday at 7 nightly with 2pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday in the multi-function room on the ground floor of the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

n It’s in Thai – no English surtitles. Tickets for tonight until Thursday are Bt450, then it’s Bt500 (Bt350 for a group of 10 or more students). Call (086) 562 3633.