Event: “iChestnuts 15″ by Stages
Venut: Jubilee Hall, Raffles Hotel
Run: 5th Jan – 21st Jan 2012
A Good Ol’ Roasting
It’s kinda amazing when you think about it – the “Chestnuts” spoof comedy franchise has lasted for 15 years, and on this 15th anniversary of the show, “iChestnuts 15″ goes the whole nine yards in reminding us how far they’ve come by interspersing the show with reenactments of a choice scene from each of their past 14 shows.
The show was part current-affairs spoofing, part retrospective – a celebration of the long and proud heritage of this most precious of local theatrical comedy franchises.
“iChestnuts 15″ is clearly a testament to the genius and tenacity of Jonathan Lim, who remains the lone common factor in the show’s storied history, for were it not for his brilliance in writing, directing and acting, this show might hardly have been able to survive for so long.
The current iteration of the show stars Jonathan himself, Rodney Oliveiro, Judee Tan, Dwayne Lau, and Judy Ngo, who was the only one not present in the previous episode.
New topics which the show covered include a chunky segment called “Into The Booths”, which was a mash up of last year’s Dream Academy production of Sondheim’s “Into The Woods” and the General Elections.
The opening segment of the night was a spoof on recent local army horror movie “23:59″, and even if you did not catch the movie (I didn’t), it was still highly entertaining in its own right.
The musical “Wicked”, of course, makes an appearance too and I very much enjoyed Judee Tan’s strong rendition of “Defying PAP”.
I thought the vocal work was marvellous…
Click (here) for the rest of the review at “Buttons in the Bread”.
