Teater Ekamatra & KLPAC presents BILIK AHMAD BERDAKI. Written and directed by Noor Effendy Ibrahim.  Featuring Mish’aal Syed Nasar, Saiful Amri Ahmad Elahi, Izad Omar, Anwar Hadi Ramli, Gloria Tan & Siti Zuraida Rahim. KLPAC, 4-8 November 2009.

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“Bilik Ahmad Berdaki” is a trilogy of three short plays set in three different Malay homes in a village.  However, this ‘village’ belongs to a reality not unlike the ‘Twilight Zone’.

“Bilik” opens with a group of people nonchalantly discussing over coffee how many people they have just killed in the fields.  Up to this point, the audience assumes that they are gang members or soldiers at war, until a female captive is brought in and they start nibbling on her.  These coffee-drinking people wearing pants and suspenders are actually cannibals.  However, one of them has developed feelings for the captive and this angers the others.  The camaraderie amongst the cannibals deteriorates and ends with everyone killing each other, leaving their female captive trapped under the wooden floor.

“Berdaki” is also about a family with a taste for human meat, but creepier.  Dim lights illuminate three characters locked in cages, softly mumbling “Mama”.   An unconscious ‘dinner guest’ is dragged in by ‘Mama’, put on a chair, undressed and scrubbed clean.  ‘Mama’s children are then let out of their cages, the table set for dinner and a butcher knife is sharpened.  An appetizer of raw (human?) meat is served, to both the children and the now-conscious captive.  Tension is high as the audience awaits the inevitable fate that faces the human prey.  The captive begs to be released to search for his missing wife, and surprisingly is let go by ‘Mama’.  But the play ends with ‘Mama’ telling her hungry offsprings: “Let him have a headstart before you go after him.”

The characters in both plays were polite and spoke proper Malay.  They drank coffee and set the table before dinner.  Their civilized etiquettes were a contrast to their perverse hunger for human meat.  It is an entertaining display of socially constructed demeanors versus feral desires.  If Hannibal Lecter was Malay and had offsprings, they would probably be similar to the families of “Bilik” and “Berdaki”:  always be hospitable to your guests and offer them coffee before devouring them.

The two kidnapped victims are the outsiders in this village.  They are the ‘normal people’, the only characters who display fear throughout the play.  They speak Hokkien and this further differentiates them from the Malay-speaking cannibals.

The characters in the village appear to be Muslim: they have Malay names, greet each other ‘Assalamulaikum’ and say ‘Bismillah’ before eating.  But since the plays are set in a twisted parallel universe, eating Chinese human meat seems to be ‘halal’ to them.

Between these two macabre tales, the play “Ahmad” provides the comic relief, albeit still in a Malay ‘Twilight Zone’.  There live five different ‘Ahmads’ in this house.  All but one wore the same clothes, yet all have different personas.  Maybe they are split personalities of a single person, or motley siblings of a quintuplet.  They are preoccupied with a bunch of bananas hanging in the middle of the room, and with the time, whose passage appears to be distorted.  One of the Ahmads insists that the bananas are sour while the others contradict him.  In comes Dahlia, a neighbour who takes naps in queer positions.  Dahlia later returns with a bag of sugar for the ‘sour’ bananas.  In this play, the banana is eroticized and eating the banana an erotic act.  The euphemism is further enforced when the Ahmads gleefully dip their bananas into the bag of sugar, strategically placed over Dahlia’s pelvis.

Sex and violence intertwines in these three plays.  Cages and ropes both suppress and arouse.  Caressing the human flesh and then devouring it satisfies hunger and physical desires.  Being slapped, strangled, bitten and eaten are displays of both violent and sexual domination.

In addition to the basic social rule of not eating another human, gender lines are also blurred.  Both male and female characters wear the same costumes.  The men and women from “Berdaki” wear grey hooded jackets over black fishnet stockings, to the amusement of some audience members.

Kudos to Noor Effendy Ibrahim who not only wrote and directed this trilogy, but also designed the minimal yet effective set.  The floor is made of plain wooden planks.  Hooks are attached to ropes which hang from the ceiling, for hanging kitchen tools and probably to inspire eeriness.  Then again, with his morbid and compelling stories unraveling on stage, an elaborate set is unnecessary.

There is no moral lesson or a clear underlying message to this trilogy.  Could it be a commentary on the tension between Malays and Chinese in Singapore (where the playwright and cast originate)?  An analysis of issues “within the Malay-Muslim context” as suggested by the playwright himself?  A reflection of modern society whose members ‘devour’ each other through envy, greed and slander?  Or maybe it is a little bit of everything.  “Bilik Ahmad Berdaki” is a subtly intense play that provokes many questions, and thankfully leaves the audience to decide the answers for themselves.

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(SAR)