The Andaman Players
Friday 23 April, 7pm – Mom Tri’s Villa Royale, Kata Noi
What happens when you ask a roomful of Phuket residents from around the globe to define the meaning of love? You get Phuket’s very own Andaman Players latest original theatre production ‘L-O-V-E is a Four Letter Word’ making its debut at Mom Tri’s Villa Royale
near Kata Noi Beach, on Friday 23 April.
The musical and comedy revue, just like love itself, promises something for everyone from ballads and Shakespearean sonnets, to cutting edge comedy sketches that will make grown men squirm and their wives raise a knowing eyebrow.
There’s even an advertisement from a well known firm of local lawyers for a prescription to alleviate the common condition known as marriage; namely divorce!
The show was conceived on the heels of the Andaman Player’s hugely successful production of this year’s Boxing Day Pantomime staged in front of a packed house of screaming kiddies and thankful parents.
Baz Daniel, Tony Kelsey-Stead and Director Michael Flynn hatched the original idea and outline and wrote much of the material, but the revue is essentially a collaborative effort with all the Andaman Players and their musical friends such as Sam Wilkinson, Ricky Zen and Toby adding material as the momentum built.
Once they had agreed that a show about ‘Love’ was in development, the Andaman Players could agree on little else about the elusive and intoxicating predicament of love
and its consequences.
The only consensus that could be reached was how to spell the word: L-O-V-E. Thus, the show was given a name and the Players embarked on a collaboration of ballads, poetry, dance, humorous songs and original comedy sketches to tell their story.
Act One explores romantic love, opening with a captivating rendition by well known Phuket personality and musician Ricky Zen singing ‘When I Fall in Love, it will be forever’, a sentiment of long term commitment which in Act Three is demonstrated to be nothing more
than a chemical reaction to hormones.
Still, Act One stays firmly rooted in the allure of steadfast love, best conveyed by a recitation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 by English TV actor Ben Dudley-Foster.
Act Two throws L-O-V-E into full satirical swing with a jaunt into the dark recesses of the human psyche, traversing the complexities of deviance, cross dressing, homo-erotica, monogamy, polygamy, sex for money and three in a bed romps confessed on a psychiatrist’s
couch. Laughs come non-stop when blond bombshell Joyce Madbak seduces her music teacher only to be interrupted by an enraged Steve Lawrence.
Being staged on the island of the ‘No Money No Honey’ t-shirt, the second act remembers 1966 when The Beatles’ Money Can’t Buy Me Love soared to the top of the charts, only for John Lennon to later correct the Beatles by saying that, “Anyone who says money can’t buy me love isn’t shopping in the right places.”
L-O-V-E offers a Phuketian remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s’Some Enchanted Evening’ about what happens in Patong when an unsuspecting tourist falls for a Lady Boy.
Act Three attempts to find a conclusion about the impossible topic of love by offering some intellectual clarity as well ageless poetry, modern dance and popular songs. Just when one might be convinced romance is but an illusion, L-O-V-E’s romantic songster collides with the science of love and ultimately prevails in a heartwarming finale that assures us that L-O-V-E is, in fact, all you need.
Tickets are available from Mom Tri’s Villa Royale. For bookings call 076-333 568 or email pr@villaroyalephuket.com
