Fat Pig

By Lilian Lee

GRAPHIC: pangdemonium.com

Fat Pig

13 Feb – 2 Mar 2014
DBS Arts Centre
100 min

Boy meets girl, they fall in love and live happily every after. Unfortunately, this trite trope only happens in the typical teenage fiction or rom-com. Pangdemonium’s ‘tragicomedy’, Fat Pig, sees none of it, simply because the girl in question is, as one of the characters in the play bluntly states, a “fat pig”.

American playwright Neil LaBute has always been candidly brutal when critiquing human nature, as seen from his other plays such as “Reasons To Be Pretty” and “The Shape of Things”. Fat Pig proves to be no exception as the characters in the play fall prey to the vulnerabilities of social scrutiny. Tom (Gavin Yap) and Helen (Frances Lee) struggle to keep their relationship afloat while battling sardonic whispers behind their backs.

Tom, a young, handsome high-flier, meets Helen, a rotund librarian with an infectious laughter, in a restaurant where they first converse over a misinterpretation of Tom’s casual remark about her being “pretty big”. Amid soiled napkins and half-eaten food, the two soon-to-be star-crossed lovers bond over banter. The chemistry between Tom and Helen is evident from the start, in spite of occasional misunderstandings and self-derogatory jokes about the latter’s weight issues.

Tom and Helen go on dates like any other normal couple, except they do it clandestinely. Tom actively avoids being seen with Helen, yet constantly reassures her that he is not ashamed of her.

Despite nurturing a genuine love for each other, Tom and Helen buckle under the pressures of the harsh public eye. Carter (portrayed by up-and-coming newcomer Zachary Ibrahim), a colleague of Tom’s, spares no effort in deriding Tom’s choice and how Helen should find a “fat somebody” like her.

On the other hand, Tom’s ex-sweetheart Jeannie (Elizabeth Lagan), fails to fathom his choice in women and narcissistically believes that he is only dating Helen to get back at her.

Carter and Jeannie encapsulate society’s unspoken thoughts. While they may make brash decrees of how one should or not look, they themselves are the biggest victims of societal pressure.

The former had dealt with low self-esteem and a tumultuous childhood with a dispassionate and overweight mother, while the latter, who is in her late twenties, struggles with insecurities about being left on the shelf.

An acute audience would realise that Tom and Helen represent people like us. LaBute puts the point across that life seldom offers an escape from norms and expectations.

The play leaves a bad taste in audiences’ mouths, but only because it subtly reflects acerbic undercurrents about body image that prevail today. The media tends to portray the perfect body as slim and slender, prompting men and women worldwide to strive towards unrealistic ideals of beauty.

Pangdemonium’s Fat Pig makes a great attempt to reflect on these ideals. Audiences may have anticipated a perfect ending, but its purposefully inconclusive ending leaves much food for thought.