Play «Xóm nghèo bá đạo»

   A backstreet pig slaughterhouse, a neighbour who left for the United States and comes home with blueprints for a shopping mall, and an entire block suddenly arguing about what its future is worth. This is Vietnamese comedy in its loudest register — náo kịch, a farce built on speed, slapstick and shouted arguments — staged in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City.

   The title resists a clean translation: bá đạo is street slang for something brash, pulled off with nerve and on a grand scale, so "the outrageous poor quarter" is roughly as close as English gets. The play was written by Tran Van Hung (Trần Văn Hưng) and directed by Gia Bao (Gia Bảo), who also appears in the cast; An Thi and Tran Dai (Trần Đại) produce.

   What matters most:

• — The block runs on a slaughterhouse owned by a father and son, Van Tue (Vạn Tuế) and Van Tho (Vạn Thọ) — the real seat of power on these streets.
• — The plot turns when Khia (Khìa), son of the local woman who sells cháo huyết (rice porridge with pork blood), comes back from the US determined to tear the slaughterhouse down and put a mall in its place.
• — A community that ran on neighbourly favours starts to fracture as every household calculates its share of the windfall.
• — Seventeen actors from the resident company, among them stage veteran Tieu Bao Quoc (Tiểu Bảo Quốc), plus Hong Trang (Hồng Trang), Anh Duc (Anh Đức), Minh Du (Minh Dự), Phuong Lan (Phương Lan), Lam Nguyen (Lâm Nguyễn), Phuoc Tai (Phước Tài), Phuc Zelo (Phúc Zelo), Le Anh Bang (Lê Anh Bằng), Cam Tu (Cẩm Tú), Tu My (Tú My), Ha Mi (Hạ Mi) and Duy Nam.

   If you live here and want an evening that is not built for visitors, this is the repertory locals actually book: kịch gia đình, family theatre, where the room laughs out loud and talks back to the stage. It also carries a recognisably Saigon subject — what happens to a neighbourhood once land value arrives and old loyalties have to be priced.

   The script is not new. This is a revival of Lò heo quay — “the roast-pork oven” — written by the same Tran Van Hung about thirty years ago. In a staging by director Le Van Tinh (Lê Văn Tĩnh) it was well known at the Hoa Binh theatre (Nhà hát Hòa Bình) around 1995, with a cast of first-rank Vietnamese stage names: Minh Nhi (Minh Nhí), Huu Chau (Hữu Châu), Ngoc Giau (Ngọc Giàu), Hong Nga (Hồng Nga), Phuoc Sang (Phước Sang), Mai Tran (Mai Trần), Kieu Oanh (Kiều Oanh), Trung Dan (Trung Dân) and Tai Linh (Tài Linh). The production later moved to the Sài Gòn stage that Phuoc Sang ran.

   Under its present title the play opened on the evening of 24 July 2016 — and at a different address, the Family stage rather than Thế Giới Trẻ — which makes this run its tenth year under the new name. Gia Bao explained to Tuổi Trẻ at the time why he went back to an old text: “With scripts as scarce as they are on stage right now, uncle Hoang Son (Hoàng Sơn), who played Vạn Thọ in Lò heo quay, suggested staging it again; the script was written more than twenty years ago, but it still means something… A lot of the detail does not fit the present day, so I changed a fair amount, made the logic hold together better and added a few characters.” That 2016 company was Hoang Son, Gia Bao, Le Giang (Lê Giang), Thanh Hien (Thanh Hiền), Hung Thuan (Hùng Thuận), Le Nam (Lê Nam), Thuy Muoi (Thụy Mười), Minh Du and Le Trang (Lê Trang) — and ten years on, Gia Bao and Minh Du are still in the cast.

   The venue is worth knowing about. The company has run since 2010 in District 1, on the edge of the Phạm Ngũ Lão backpacker quarter. Director Ngoc Hung (Ngọc Hùng) and the production house Sài Gòn Phẳng built it against the market logic of the time: rather than hiring pop singers and models to move tickets, they staked the stage on young actors trained at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Theatre and Cinema (Trường Đại học Sân khấu Điện ảnh TP.HCM). Thu Trang, Dieu Nhi (Diệu Nhi), Quang Tuan (Quang Tuấn) and Khuong Ngoc (Khương Ngọc) all came up here, with senior artists Bao Quoc (Bảo Quốc), Dam Loan (Đàm Loan) and Ngoc Trinh (Ngọc Trinh) backing the early seasons.

   The house holds just over three hundred seats in three tiers: standard at 330,000 ₫, VIP at 360,000 ₫ and fifteen VVIP seats in the front row at 400,000 ₫. A seat counts as held once the box office confirms it by phone, and the full seating plan is on the theatre’s booking page; several titles from this stage are also sold through the usual online ticketing services. Other questions go to [email protected].

   The performance is in Vietnamese without surtitles, though náo kịch leans heavily on physical comedy, so a good share of the action reads without the dialogue.

   Come for a loud, fast, unpretentious night at the theatre — and sit close if you can.