Under the Moon

Half an hour into New Theatre Society’s new work “On Behalf of the Moon” (“Mon haeng chantra chong samdaeng rittha na batni”, in Thai), I found myself thinking of the dessert known as lotchong Savoey songkhrueang”. For me, this is as contemporary Thai as can be. Lotchong, or cendol, like most of our favourites, is not originally Thai but has been adapted to fit our taste.

Farida Jiraphan’s singing was also delightful, and occasionally hilarious

The middle word is a Thai restaurant I’ve been frequenting since childhood while songkhrueang suggests the many extra ingredients the restaurant has put into this delectable dessert bowl – among them, cantaloupe, taro, coconut ice cream and whipped cream, though the recipe varies from restaurant to restaurant. That is to say, after the initial intercultural adaptation, the intracultural keeps going in this “Kitchen of the World.”
It wasn’t that I had missed dinner before going to the Crescent Moon Space in Pridi Banomyong Institute, or that the play wasn’t so compelling that my mind was wandering elsewhere. Rather, the 90-minute play, every minute of which was engaging and full of surprises, reminded me of many works by this company. New Theatre Society is led by directors and script adapters Damkerng Thitapiyasak and Parnrut Kritchancha who are known, and renowned, for adaptations from various sources – plays, movies, novels and so on from Thailand and overseas. And it’s evident that in recent years they’ve pushed the adaptation bar even higher: each work comprises elements from more than one source.

Grisana Punpeng’s character, left, didn't like being under the direct and glaring light.

Here, Parnrut was inspired mainly by the Tony Award-nominated relationship drama by Terrence McNally “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” (1991), later adapted into a movie with a shorter title starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, the Academy Award winning romantic comedy “Moonstruck” (1987), with Cher and Nicolas Cage, as well as, as the programme leaflet says, “many other stories from many people.” The key to any dish as well as to any adaptation is not only the quality of each ingredient but also the quantity and how well they amalgamate a single spoonful. The audience, after all, is enjoying cendol with coconut ice cream and whipped cream, not on its own. And here came the only glitch in this Thai play adaptation.
“On Behalf of the Moon” centres around three groups of mostly middle-aged characters. On a full moon night, a married woman (Farida Jiraphan) is sitting at her favourite table with a white rose at a bar waiting for “someone” while her husband, whom we never get to see, is upstairs in their apartment. Upstairs in another room, university professor (Grisana Punpeng) has a one-night-stand with his former student (Olan Kiatsomphol) and on a nearby street corner, in a reference to the popular TV soap “Chamloei Rak” (literally “Prisoner of Love”), a roti and teh tarik vendor (Khalid Midam) encounters his sister-in-law-to-be (Akira Modsakul).

Khalid Midam's and Akira Modsakul's characters were equally vibrant.

Thanks to Parnrut’s playwriting technique, these characters were deftly intertwined and their dialogues frequently crisscrossed. At the end, though, the play didn’t reach any strong message – it was leading towards something and then it just stopped and held back as if it didn’t like commitment – and the audience was merely given an opportunity to glimpse into these characters’ lives. Besides, the moon has different connotations in different cultures. Here, while the human characters were completely Thai, the non-human counterpart, the Moon itself and always present in the background both literally and figuratively, was quite American, a result of the play’s original sources.
Thanks in part to the almost equally divided weight of roles, each of the five performers shone as brightly as the full moon in theirs. Farida connected well with the audience as the narrator and she was both compelling in both tragic and comic moments. Grisana and Olan, despite the former outweighing the latter in terms of acting experience, formed a credible gay couple. And either Khalid was typecast, again, as an eccentric Muslim man or the role was specifically written for him. Still, his and Akira’s performance in this play was like a verbal and physical boxing match – neither backed off – and the audience was kept entertained trying to guess who, if anyone, would win. 
Wichaya Artamat and Tawit Keitprapai also contributed significantly to this production. The former deftly created three different scenes, with keen attention to detail, notwithstanding the studio’s limited space. The latter, using normal on top of theatrical lighting equipment, further helped us define each part and added the right mood and tone.
That said, the audience is always looking forward to New Theatre Society’s next adaptation. We can never guess what they will choose to adapt, how these original story sources are adapted and whether the songkhrueang outcome would eventually fit our taste.

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