Anak Kerbau Mati Emak
(The Orphan Buffalo Calf)
Istana Budaya, Kuala Lumpur, January 16 to 25, 2004
Review by Azlan Adnan


Just came back from seeing a play, Anak Kerbau Mati Emak (The Orphan Buffalo Calf). Written in Bahasa Melayu and set in the mid-Seventies, this socio-political work can been seen as Malaysia’s answer to Archie Bunker, a popular sit-com of that decade.

On the larger scale, it explores the current themes of the day: social and economic development, and the empowerment of women through education. These “heavy� national development themes are cleverly juxtaposed with slap-stick humour in the form of the village idiot who brings levity to an otherwise dry script; much in the same way Shakespeare would use the court jester or clown as a theatrical device.

The protagonist is a father and husband who is a bigoted, chauvinistic, un-listening boor who screams at his wife and daughter, and barks orders at them, who are submissive and subservient to him. In one scene, he canes his daughter with a rotan for having, in an act of unprecedented self-determinism, the audacity to want to end her engagement. While he is a satire of the typical uneducated male villager of the day, he is not altogether evil but a product of his ignorance and therefore there is also a human, plausible side to his character.

The reason the daughter wants to end the engagement is interesting. Although she is fond of (kasih), loves (cinta) and cares for (sayang) her fiancé, she hates his mentality, which is similar to her father’s. A crisis surfaces when her fiancé sees her with the village schoolmaster and confronts her with what he sees as a love triangle. She asks him if he is jealous (cemburu) and asks for the reasons why. When he is unable to articulate the reasons for his jealousy and obvious anger at her, she decides to break off the engagement, which leads him to sulk (merajuk, kecil hati), albeit inwardly.

When she informs her father of her decision, he is angered by the lost of face this brings to him and his wife. An engagement is an investment, he says, the expected return of which is marriage and marital bliss. Therefore, while an engagement is not to be taken lightly, the decision to break it is also not to be taken lightly as it constitutes a wasted investment, not just a lost of face because it also denotes a breach of promise.

The First Act is slow and very loosely written, with separate threads that do not appear to be there for a purpose. It could have been more tightly written with much of the superfluous conversation cut out. The pace picks up from the Second Act onwards. The device of the radio is unique: whenever it is switched on, it is either the news with reports of economic development projects or of a political speech with development themes.

The resolution of the play is a happy one; all the loose threads are neatly tied-up and the audience is left with a definite feel-good factor. The daughter, in an unpredicted and surprising development, wins her way with the help of the village schoolmaster, but not in the manner the audience was earlier led to expect.