Recalling sad ghosts from the gay life

THE slogan for the racing pages of one local paper claims none of its readers are poverty-stricken. In a week of newspaper price wars and out-of-business publishers comes Edward Lam's Wildlife In The Fast Lane.

Hailed as a study in debt, overdrafts and withdrawn VISA cards, this 'lexicon of poverty' is in reality quite different from the description in the press and publicity material.

The Chinese title of this show is warmly nostalgic of a series of colourful soft 'erotic' Cantonese films from the late 1960s and early 1970s featuring starlet Tina Ti.

The seven-word titles of these B movies generally refer to peeping toms, scoundrels and 'dirty old-men'.

Lam has effectively transferred this idea through a stream of modern Chinese 'limericks' into his new production.

Wildlife In The Fast Lane forms a trilogy of 'queer-ographical' theatre pieces.

These include the earlier What A Cruel World and its subsequent reworked version.

Through a myriad sketches interlinked by Canto-pop numbers, dead-pan dialogue and amateurish dancing, it looks at the contemporary male identity, camp stereotypes and homosexual humour.

A marked difference in this show is that Lam has moved on from his earlier works and the staging here is subdued.

Whereas The Return of A Cruel Cruel World ended with an allegorical, over-blown finale, this time the audience was unsure whether or not the show had finished.

The skits on gay-dating, boy-friend swapping, new pop talents and Taiwanese folk-dancing are all there.

But this time around they are less prominent.

I sensed that Lam has turned increasingly biographical and this piece is more personal than ever.

The quest for love, desire and reclaiming lost youth might seem the stock-cliche of entertainment.

However, ultimately they are the everyday banalities of life.

An underlying melancholy permeates one key scene where each member of the all-male cast insistently repeats to each other 'I'll never leave you' and then proceeds to walk-off.

This poignancy carries into scenes where the actors get under and then out from under blankets with innocent goodnight kisses.

The show needs to be developed more and the humour is strained at times.

But like 3 am radio ballads or late-night radio shows, the ghosts stay with you after you have switched off.

WILDLIFE IN THE FAST LANE, Edward Lam, Shouson Theatre, Arts Centre, until December 28