I HAVE a confession to make: I was ready to dismiss The Vlee Conference, instalment No 4 in Irene Ang’s comedy sketch series that began with The V Conference four years ago. For one thing, it’s not a laugh-a-minute session all the way through.
I remember thinking “Oh that bit’s rather unnecessary” or “old, already” or “hmm, forgettable”. That is, until later, when I started asking others what they thought of the show. Most of the replies went along the lines of “It was okay, lah” quickly followed by “but this scene was very funny” or “that scene was hilarious”. As we talked, more and more scenes were added to the “funny” list, which in the end outweighed the “not so funny” list.
The night’s proceedings began with the opening musical number and monologue: A great start with a great take on the YOG. I don’t want to give anything away, suffice it to say that it was all cheekily done. (You’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it.) Irene Ang and gang – Chua Enlai, Shane Mardjuki and Brendon Fernandez – took their potshots at the recent sporting event, all of which landed dead centre.
While the dudes went to change, Irene took centrestage with her monologue dressed in a Marie France gown. Taking off from last year’s monologue, where she expressed interest in becoming the president of Singapore, she went straight into her presidential campaign plans, which involved lactating mothers, durian eaters on the MRT and David Gan as the education minister.
Then followed a series of sketches which, for most part worked – particularly the one featuring “Rui En”, “Ping Hui” and “Liping” from Unriddle. The sketch links, with poked fun at Tom Jones and the revised Starhub channels, were brilliant though.
After the break, the second half kicked off with the “How To Be Courteous Via K-Pop” sketch, which started off as side-splitting, but started to look and sound a little stale after a while. And once again, Irene as Goddess Kuan Yin was sublime – try pronouncing the name of the Icelandic volcano that recently erupted as Hokkien phonics. Her performance was great – I even laughed at the PCK references.
The sketch which drew the most laughs though, was “Singapore/Malaysia’s Joint Bid For World Cup 2022” with Enlai as the Malaysian minister and Shane as the Singapore counterpart. The timing was superb and the reactions brilliant. Those who say that Singaporeans cannot laugh at themselves obviously don’t have a sense of humour.
However, there were a few duds (for me, lah). Personally, I could have done with shorter versions of the Polo Boys and Jack Neo sketches. They felt a little hackneyed, too long and too old to be topical. The Foreign Workers sketch could also have been more concise.
Still, when the players were spot on, they really struck gold. Enlai and Shane were excellent in all the sketches they did together. Brendon’s gag as the Singapore Flyer was riotous, as was the Lady Baba segment. And Irene showed why she’s still the Queen of Comedy in Singapore with er impersonations (her Tiger Woods was funny) and improvisation – especially when she came out to banter with the crowd only to admit “actually, I’m only here to waste time so that the guys can change costume”. Plus, the ensemble’s ability to just adapt, adopt and improve on the fly (pun intended) meant that they could engage the audience nicely.
So is it worth the price of admission? I’d say yes. I know there were a couple of hiccups but that was the first night – chalk it up to nerves. (Any artiste who says they don’t get nervous before going onstage is either lying or doesn’t have that passion any more I think.) And yes, I’d like to go again on closing night and see whether the kinks were all ironed out. How, Irene? Can spare another ticket or not?
The Vlee Conference runs until Sep 12, 8pm at Zirca. Tickets at $55 (includes one drink). (Photos courtesy of Rupture)
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