As in my New Year commitment to continue to engage with the
arts, I had my February hit of theatre, Dream Academy's Detention
Katong.
With its catchy slogan about "Bad Girls Who Do
Good", I was expecting a "Gossip-Girl-esque", "Mean-Girls-inspired",
"Legally-Blonde-empowering" kind of all-girl feel-good musical
comedy. Sadly, it came up short.
The premise is simple. Amanda Chin (played by Valerie Choo)
is a straight-lace student who has decided to become naughty and join detention
overnight after catching her mother on a date with a secret someone. Her
mischievous endeavours peak when they are published on the online portal,
"Spotted" and spread like wildfire throughout her school.
Despite the seemingly straight-forward plot and a strong
opening number, the plot becomes sluggishly and disappointingly lacklustre. It
is uncertain if this is because of Detention Katong's
ambitious script that clumsily weaved together too many tangents
(a-single-mother-daughter relationship; bad-girl-good-girl-stereotypes; and
cyber-bullying) or a production too eager to give its star-studded cast a solo
each, at the expanse of the plot's pace.
In particular, Neo Swee Lin's tongue-in-cheek "S and
M" as well as Suhaimi Yusof's "leave them to their own devices"
numbers stole the already dim limelight from Amanda's rising resentment with
her mother. Other scenes such as the bad-girl-ensemble's character-building
number during the parent-teacher meeting could have been dovetailed to give
Amanda's character more motivation to carry out her devious plans. If cyber-bullying
is indeed - as writer Selena Tan shared post-show - the root theme for
discussion, the plot device, online portal, "Spotted", should have
been emphasised more to give the school groups present, more opportunities to
unpack the issues with students.
That said, I think Detention Katong has
promising potential. Suhaimi Yusof's comedic interludes with local references
brought the house to rapturous laughter. Detention Katong's music
explores a range of music genres from its keyboard-based "Eyes
Closed" reprised beautifully throughout; a tension-filled, EDM-inspired
"Detention"; and ballad "Changing Chords", challenges the
notion that a musical should be comprised of music from a single genre.
Dream Academy's attempt at curating the performance with its
CD is commendable. It is an important step in building the local art's scenes
exploration into locally written musicals; I already have my eye on Tropicana. I
believe that fine-tuning the arrangement of its songs and plot would make Detention
Katong a more compelling local musical to watch and perhaps,
reflect. Hopefully in the not too distant future, Detention
Katong will be reprised better than before.