Ehmagawd last night I watched the most God-awful drama in my life

I left the hall feeling extremely emotionally and mentally disturbed.

And I wasn't the only one. You could positively feel the disgust rippling through the audience at the drama that had just unfolded, as well as the relief that, thank God, it was finally over. I swear, a parent was even heard consoling her young children, insisting that none of it was real.

Damn, it was seriously disturbing.

I'm just glad that not many people were in the audience to witness this horrific drama. You see, that night, there were two dramas, or "amateur productions", being acted out by two classes taking Drama this semester. As it was basically an assignment, with 25 marks allocated to it, there was no hype, promotion or posters about it. Heck, there weren't even any doorkeepers outside to welcome us.

Since I'm obviously not taking Drama or even BENL (contrary to popular belief, I am a Sociology student), I only found out about it from my Sciences of Qur'an classmate. Call me curious, but overhearing the words "toga" and "drama" mentioned in one breath totally piqued my interest. Dude, it sounded cooool. So I promptly invited Kim and Nazriq to watch the drama when I met them for lunch.

The aforementioned toga was present in the first drama entitled Lysistrata, which, thank God, was not as emotionally taxing and disturbing as the second one. Because, seriously, a girl can take only that many doses of The Creepy in one night without cracking up. But have no fear; I still have my gripes regarding the first one.

The theme of the first drama was clearly women's rights. Okay, no surprises there, since BENL is positively bursting at the seams with estrogen power. The play was set in Greece, and it was about the war between Athens and Sparta. The husbands wanted war, the wives wanted peace (naturally). So how did the women make a stand? By withholding sex from their husbands as long as the poor dicks continued to fight in war.

Urm, hello? What are they trying to say? That women can only use sex appeal to get their way? Gee, am I the only person smacking my forehead right now?

They even had a scene where one of the husbands fruitlessly tries to have sex with his wife. He even bemoans his neglected "little member". Just so you know, there were children in the audience. And this was held in an Islamic university.

I know it was supposed to be a Greek play, but they could have at least substituted some of the lines to make it sound less... I don't know… pagan? Like 'oh Zeus!' to 'Astarghfillahalazim!' and 'alcohol' to 'sparkling ribena' and ‘sacrifice’ to ‘slaughter’. Just a suggestion. And the whole sex scene? Come on, you don't have to stoop to crude sex jokes to coax a few laughs out of the audience.

I get that, just because we're in an Islamic university, it doesn't mean we have to drench our dramas with Islamic values. But this drama, and especially the second drama, was positively anti-Islam. That, I cannot accept.

Acting-wise, there's not much to say about Lysistrata. The leading actress outshone the rest, and I give her props for being able to memorise such a lengthy script, while infusing personality into it. Good voice projection and sassy intonation, but some of the lines were hard to catch as she was speaking so fast. A few of the other cast members, however, should have come equipped with subtitles; they were speaking as if they were in an overly dramatised Venezuelan telenovela. As for the chorus of Old Men (ironically played by Young Girls); Adilah you should give them some choral-speaking tips. The six of them weren't speaking in time, which made their scenes a whole waste as nobody could understand what they were saying. It was like listening to a bunch of noisy, castrated old men.

Kudos to the wardrobe manager, though. The costumes were a fantastic assortment of colours and really eye-catching. Boob-emphasising, though, but I guess we can't have everything, innit?

Overall, it was messy and draggy, but the jokes scattered around and, of course, the lead actress, saved the drama. I think we all sighed in relief when we realized the drama was over.

Until we realized that there was another drama to be shown. You should have seen the horror dawning comically in our eyes, as well as the desperate, pleading hope that it would be at least entertaining. It wasn’t so much to ask for, right? When the MC announced a ten-minute break before the next play would start, we all desperate scrambled out of the hall and ran to the convenience store to replenish our chocolate stockpile like deprived, PMS-y maniacs.

But, as it turned out, chocolate (or yoghurt and sweets, in Kim’s case) was not enough to prepare us for the traumatizing disaster that would unfold before our very eyes.

It started out very ominously, with the MC mysteriously neglecting to mention the title of the play or even explaining what it was about. Hey, throw us a crumb, why don’t you? We would have even appreciated an “Untitled 1” – at least have a name for your drama, regardless how lame it is. We had no idea whether it would be a period drama, a Shakespeare adaptation, or a feel-good play. The only clue we were given, unintentionally of course, was that the actors were dressed in normal clothes. Not much of a clue, if you ask me. At least Lysistrata prepared “programme books” for us, with a summary of the play. That is, if you can call an A4 paper with the names of the cast all spelt wrongly and the words “Hope You Enjoyed” gracing the back cover a "programme book". Sorry, but I expected more from students of Bachelor of English. But I give you an A for effort.

Because we had absolutely no idea what the drama was about, when two actresses come on stage – one dressed like a man in suit and pants, but with tudung, and the other dressed like, well, someone who should star on What Not To Wear – and were acting like they were married, well, it’s absolutely natural that we’d assume they’re a lesbian couple. Right?

Until the fashion victim (can’t remember her name) refers to the other actress as Edward. Hurm. Methinks the writer of this drama is very smitten by a certain sparkly vampire. We can safely assume from his name that Husband Edward is perfect.

I can’t remember much from the first scene because the lines were as draggy as a thesis. Just that Fashion Victim Wife received a threatening letter, and Husband Edward assures her that Everything’s Fine, now go waste time gossiping about Jimmy Choo's with your shallow girlfriends, you whiny, callous woman. And so she does. I remember the name Martin being thrown around, but I cannot for the life of me recall the relevance of that name to the whole drama.

The second scene was dragged out too long as well. Four ladies gossiping at a table over lunch. I interpreted each one of them as the Overdramatic Queen, The Voice of Reason, The Metropolitan Femme Fatale, and the Fashion Victim Wife. (Personally, the whole setting struck a disturbingly familiar chord in me afterwards. Must find out who the writer of this drama is.) Gossip ensues, until Husband Edward turns up to join the ladies.

Are you bored yet? Because I definitely was, especially as my chocolate stock was depleted and I was running solely on the sweet Kim offered me.

In the next scene, The Metroplitan Femme Fatale, (who, by the way, is easily the best actress in the whole play and whose talents were completely wasted on a minor role that had the potential to be the starring role, for God’s sake) amps up the sex-ay charm on Edward, and even seduces him into holding a few of her many shopping bags. So! Scandalous! Meanwhile, Overdramatic Queen and Voice of Reason watch from afar. Voice of Reason insists on being rational and says they’re “just friends”, while Overdramatic Queen hyperventilates in delight and calls up Fashion Victim Wife. Long, boring telephone call with inappropriate stressing on the wrong words ensues. As well as a lot of weird body twitching.

From this point onwards, the rest of the play is just about Edward and his wife. Seriously. None of the other characters turn up ever again. And you know what the worst part of that fact is? Kim, Naz and I decided to stay for the rest of the play only because we wanted to support one of the actresses, who is our friend. But she never came on stage again. What the eff?!

Anyways, on with the drama! The married couple fight. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn. The only memorable part was when Fashion victim wife screams something along the lines of “you’re having an affair with her because I’m fat and she’s thin?” Believe it or not, someone in the audience replies with a resounding YES. I smirk for a multitude of reasons too complex to explain here.

In the next scene, the wife attempts to commit suicide. I kid you not. I actually blurted out “what the f*ck?!” when I saw it. It wasn’t artsy or cool or even meaningful. The wife had a pizza-cutter by her wrist as she gurgled and giggled about killing herself, Edward, or/and Femme Fatale while uber-disturbing, freaky, tinkling, music-box lullaby played in the background.

One parent closed the eyes of her child. Another family actually left the hall. Yes, it was that disturbing. And in more ways than one. The wife was slowly chanting “tick-tock, tick-tock” as she was about to kill herself. Holy macaroni, I felt like puking there and then. I’m sorry, but what type of mind comes up with this kind of scene? And what type of mind considers it acceptable to perform such a graphic and sinful act in an Islamic university in front of families and children? I was deeply disturbed by the scene, and I swear I wasn’t the only one.

So the wife is sent to the mental hospital, where she is diagnosed of having split personality and even writing the threatening letter. But not before she gives a ridiculous, bloated, twisted, self-absorbed monologue that was clearly not only painful to the audience, but to the poor actress herself.

Everyone burst into laughter laced with desperation when the wife, husband and doctor walked off stage at the end of the scene. It wasn’t supposed to be funny, and it wasn’t even remotely funny. But we laughed. We laughed because we wanted to relieve ourselves from this uncalled-for suffering. I don't think any one of us unsuspecting audience truly deserved to be tortured this way.

In the next scene, everyone (meaning Edward and his wife, because only they matter, since all the other characters have been discarded so carelessly a long, long time ago) is happy.

Then suddenly, Edward discovers another threatening letter. "Oh no!" He/She groans, along with the rest of the audience. Then, the worst thing happens; the wife appears, holding out her right hand in front of her, her wrist clearly drenched in blood, as she calls out "Ed-waaaaard" hauntingly.

The audience is incredulous. I am incredulous. We shout and we groan and we even laugh, because this is just too unbelievable. It has long crossed the line of absurdity, and is deeply entrenched into the valley of poo.

As we are positively choking with indignation and disbelief, suddenly the MC's voice floods the hall: "we hope you enjoyed the drama tonight...."

No way. No effing way. That's it?

*Added on 24th March, 9:57pm:

Comments are henceforth disabled from this post

Thank you to everyone for taking your time to read and comment on my review :-) Again, I apologise for any feelings that have been hurt from my writings.

The reason I am henceforth disabling comments is because I gave the production crew the opportunity to meet me face-to-face and express whatever is on their mind (as clearly, judging from the comments, there's a lot of pent-up anger going on here). Unfortunately, you didn't take the chance. Too bad.

To everyone else who enjoyed reading my review and found the comments as hilarious as I did, do wait for my upcoming blog post, in which I shall be giving awards to the best comments! Among the categories will be:

Best Comment In A Foreign Language

Most "Insafable" Comment

Most Off-Topic Comment

Best Neutral Comment

and more! :D Stay tuned!*

*Added on 20th March 2009, 4.31pm: From now on, comments are moderated. Comments which do not reveal your true identity or email are automatically deleted, regardless of what you say. That means, comments by "Anonymous" or "A-T" or "Anime Freak" or other nicknames that don't reveal who you are will NOT be approved. If you really want your voice to be heard by everyone, reveal yourself and be proud of who you are and what you're saying! It's only fair :)*