The lead cast of Andak Bertandak from left to right: Ellie Suriaty as Mak Andak, Riena Diana as Kiah, and Azhan Rani as Pak Andak. Photo Credit: Akmal Helmy Burhanuddin
(This blog post originated from KAYPOH. For the full article, please visit KAYPOH's website.)
Review by Leysha Al-yahya
SUMMARY: Andak Bertandak debuts at KLPAC from August 29 to September 1, 2024. Directed by Azhar Zainal, this farcical comedy explores superstition and family, featuring a blend of veteran and new talents.
Andak Bertandak tells the story of Mak Andak and Pak Andak as they try to figure out what is ailing their only daughter, Rokiah. They do this by calling on the local shaman, along with their kampung’s bidan (midwife) but all the while stopping Rokiah from seeing her husband-to-be, who is later revealed to be a doctor. As I first entered the theater, I was in awe of the set, a well built two-storey kampung house that fit perfectly into Pentas 2 at KLPac. The details of the set design and props transported me to a place I must admit, I don’t often visit these days and I was excited for what was to come.
The play begins with Elly Suriarty miming a classic Malay song as she sweeps the exterior of her home when out of nowhere, her only daughter, Rokiah, begins to scream from inside her room asking for her mother. Running out of her room, Rokiah explains to Mak Andak that she feels a pain in her chest, and thus the chaos of Andak Bertandak begins as Mak Andak opens up to Pak Andak about their daughter’s ailment. Clueless, the two of them call on the local pervy shaman and the trusted midwife separately to help figure out what is hurting Rokiah. After ruling out that it is a hex put on them and that it is simply just misplaced wind, the family is stumped but when Rokiah’s fiance and the resident doctor arrives, he is the one to explain to everyone that what Rokiah could actually have is cancer. This is where the play ends as the family rushes to bring Rokiah to the clinic.
Jay Izwazir as the Pervy Shaman discusses Rokiah’s mysterious ailment with Azhan Rani, who plays Pak Andak, in a tense moment from Andak Bertandak. Photo Credit: Akmal Helmy Burhanuddin
In an article with Sinar Harian [1] Fasyali Fadzli, the scriptwriter of the play mentioned that this was a play he had written in 2007 as part of his diploma at Aswara. The play discusses the culture in certain Malay societies where people’s distrust for more modern medicine pushes families to overlook very serious illnesses as a hex to be healed by herbs and chants or by excess wind that can be released with massages and hot stones. Although I understood this as a whole, the play did fail at highlighting this very point for me as most of the scripts’ punchlines about the couple’s more traditional thinking fell flat as the lines took a backseat to the ad-libs done by the actors to get more of a reaction out of the audience. The script in itself felt dated in the way the story was told and in the ways the characters spoke. I understand many people in rural communities still believe in these traditional healing methods and though I felt there was promise to the premise of the play, the way it was told felt trite and didn’t bring much to the conversation of traditional healing methods vs modern medicine other than to say that the characters, Mak Andak and Pak Andak were wrong for believing in practices their societies had done for centuries before. This made me wonder if there were any efforts to edit and or update the script from 2007 as I found myself wondering if the handling of this topic was something the playwright would agree with more than ten years later.
To elaborate, I felt that the use of comedy in the play seemed to take away from the issues highlighted by Rokiah and her parents, including their clear refusal to allow Rokiah to see her fiance and the local doctor not only because it would cause gossip amongst the villagers but also because they feared for what he might think of her. Instead, jokes were made about Rokiah being “broken” and “unkept” and Mak Andak worried that all this would cause the doctor to not want to marry Rokiah. Though I know plenty of people who speak like this. It did feel like the comedy of the play was less reliant on the timing and the idiosyncrasies of the characters but instead, focused more on the jokes about women’s bodies and the superstitious mindsets of the village people around them as jumpscares and the talk of demons and ghosts became more and more prevalent throughout the performance. Two new characters were introduced midway and it was very clear they were there neither to push the plot forward nor to introduce a new idea to the play but instead served as walking, talking props. One of them passed out very quickly after he was introduced onstage and was asleep on stage all the way until the very end, where when he is woken up by the old midwife and is scared out of his mind, is used as the punchline to the entire play. A part of me felt this was a waste of a character and an actor as the punchline could have come much earlier and didn’t necessarily require someone else to make.
Riena Diana as Kiah, clutching her chest in distress, is confronted by Ellie Suriaty as Mak Andak anxiously tends to her in a pivotal moment from Andak Bertandak. Photo Credit: Akmal Helmy Burhanuddin
Aside from that, the comedy only seemed to make light of what can be seen as something as serious as sexual harassment. The clearest scene this happens is when the shaman insists on entering Rokiah’s room to......(Continue reading)
