Comedy play «Chuyện 2 Chàng» (Two Guys' Story)

   Two broke students have just been thrown out of their rented room when they hear that a wealthy property developer is looking for a private tutor for his only daughter. He has exactly one condition, and it looks unbeatable: the tutor has to be a woman. That knot is where this Saigon comedy of errors starts.

   The play was written by Nguyễn Bảo Ngọc and produced by Trần Đại and An Thi. The two heroes are Khương Đồng and Quang Tính; the daughter, Hà, looks and behaves exactly like a boy, which is precisely why her father set that condition in the first place. Needing both a roof and a side job, the pair pass themselves off as a gay couple and are finally let into the house: one teaches Hà how to dress, walk and speak, the other handles her schoolwork. The whole arrangement holds together right up to the moment when Quang Tính’s mother turns up unannounced.

   The leads are Quang Tuan (Quang Tuấn) and Thuan Nguyen (Thuận Nguyễn). Nine performers are billed on the poster, among them Tieu Bao Quoc (Tiểu Bảo Quốc), Hong Trang (Hồng Trang), Minh Du (Minh Dự), Diem Phuong (Diễm Phương), Phuong Lan (Phương Lan), Lam Nguyen (Lâm Nguyễn) and Phúc Zelo.

   Sân Khấu Thế Giới Trẻ is run by the Sài Gòn Phẳng media company and has built its name on family comedy, with everyday dramas, horror plays and musicals sitting side by side in its monthly line-up. It is a useful stop if you want to see what mainstream Vietnamese theatre actually looks like rather than read about it.

   The performance is in Vietnamese, and the theatre says nothing about subtitles or translation. The plot is simple enough that reading the synopsis beforehand carries you through most of the evening, since much of the comedy rides on disguise and on how the characters react to each other. In the theatre's current schedule this title has a single evening.

   Come for an easy, loud, unpretentious night out — this stage has been doing exactly that for years.