★★★★
Kumar Muniandy’s solo show is a deeply personal and political work, addressing a range of issues surrounding race, queerness, and diaspora. These themes emerge in the short conversations that Muniandy’s autobiographical character Krishna, a queer Indian-Malaysian man, has with various men during a German gay speed-dating event.
The episodic structure created by the speed-dating framework is clever, facilitating a quick progression through the various topics that Muniandy wants to explore, with the focus shifting between each conversation. This is necessary as he seeks to cover a lot of ground, including the rampant homophobia in Malaysia, racism in the West, the lack of understanding of colonial histories and legacies, and the disparagement of certain sexual preferences in the gay community (to name a few). The dating partners are presented via impressively seamless voiceovers, though some of the pre-recorded performances are conspicuously weak. The derisive laughter that many of these characters provoked in the audience spoke to the accuracy of Muniandy’s script in capturing archetypes of Western insensitivity, like the white guy who “doesn’t see colour” or has adopted a Hindu “spiritual name” after visiting India.
Though wide ranging, the script’s commendable ability to distil complex issues into brief, contentious altercations means that such variety never grows overwhelming. Indeed, the relentless series of deeply personal conversations powerfully conveys the crushing emotional toll on those having to constantly defend, justify, and explain themselves and their identities. The quality of Muniandy’s acting draws this out and keeps what could have been a heavy-handed performance tonally varied and dynamic, ever shifting between disbelief, anger, despair, and exhaustion. However, the show’s ambition does become overreaching when introducing the emotions and circumstances surrounding the death of Krishna’s mother. It is a pertinent and touching story, but one that warrants a deeper exploration in a separate project to this one.
Second Class Queer was on at studio at C ARTS | C venues | C aquila
It wasn’t Kumar’s mother that died in the show, it was the character Krishna’s mother. Please correct this error.