Phil Wang - A Thpoonful of Thugar

 

 

Okay, so, I'm 11 years old. We're in Malaysian North Borneo. The year is 2001, and high off the adrenaline of surviving Y2K. [audience laughter] My tiny primary school and essentially a bit of seaside jungle decides to put on a production of Mary Poppins. [audience laughter] It’s most ambitious play to date, and it had done one. [audience chuckles] Auditions are announced, and instantly the school is awash with gossip and conjecture, “When will rehearsals begin? Who will win the eponymous role of Poppins? What is a play?” [audience laughter] 

 

Now, I want to be Bert Badly. I love the film Mary Poppins and Dick Van Dyke's portrayal of the charming chimney sweep with his devil may care attitude towards social mores, [audience laughter] and what constituted a cockney accent [audience laughter] led me to believe that truly anything was possible. The day of the audition arrived. And in that sweaty tropical classroom, I have to say, I bloody nailed it. [audience laughter] I was big and boisterous, fun and fabulous. Bert was mine. I strolled over to Pam, our Australian librarian and play director, to victoriously collect my chimney sweep brush and flat cap. Pam asks me if there's a part in the play I'd want in particular, “Yeah, just a little bit, Pam, but please.” [audience laughter] 

 

At this point, Pam looks me up and down and goes, “Hmm, okay. One question, Phil. Can you dance?” Now, she says these words, can you dance, in a way that I now know would be described as pointedly. [audience laughter] The problem Pam has noticed and that I have not, is that the part of Bert requires quite a lot of athleticism and dancing. He twirls over rooftops and spins graciously into chalk drawings. I was quite possibly the fattest boy in Borneo. [audience laughter] Really huge. Very, very big. I was an 11-year-old boy in the body of a darts player on boxing day. [audience laughter] 

 

Pam suggests instead the part of Mr. Banks, the father. I protest, but Pam assures me the role is more suited to my abilities, “Mr. Banks is erudite and mature and most importantly, stationary.” [audience laughter] I argue and argue, but then graciously accept. Pretty soon, I really get into it. I'm a bit disappointed at first, but I really get into the part of Mr. Banks. I really get into the process of rehearsing. I start practicing on my own at home, singing the songs and doing the lines. One day my mother overhears me practicing. She comes over and she goes, “Phil, congratulations on the part. [audience laughter] Now, would you like to do something about your lisp?” 

 

Now, I'd never heard the word lisp before, so I was quite incredulous and a little bit angry, actually. [audience laughter] And I said, “Lithe? What's a “Lithe?” [audience laughter] She goes, “That is, dear, you can't say your S's properly.” I go, “Don't be ridiculouth. [audience laughter] I'm fine.” And she says, “Are you sure?” I'm like, “Yeth.” [audience laughter] Now, I was cynical about my mother's claims, because I know my mother. I know knew my mother, I still do. [audience laughter] She's a big worrier, my mother. She worries too much. I was just convinced that this lisp thing was just another thing she'd made up to satisfy her own sick addiction to panic. [audience laughter] 

 

It's just the way she was. My mother imbued in me two core values that have held on to this day, feminism and anxiety. [audience laughter] You might find it strange for me to describe anxiety as a value, but I assure you your belief in the redistribution of wealth or cultural relativism does not enjoy the enthusiasm with which I still believe I've left the shower on. [audience laughter] 

 

Feminism and morbid anxiety. My mother has always wanted her children to know two, that women are equal to men and that death is always around the corner. [audience laughter] So, I ignore it. I let go of this lisping and I move on. I continue going to rehearsals in blithful ignorance. And things are going well. The preparations for what must have been history's most humid production of Mary Poppins [audience chuckles] are going pretty well. We were not messing about. We had a house. 17 Cherry Tree Lane was built. One of the parents, Mr. He was an engineer and built the house in two stories with a living room and a bedroom and magical drawers that through a system of pulleys and strings would close with one of Poppins twists of her wrist. 

 

The rehearsals were not going quite as well. Teaching a bunch of Asian kids the full works of P.L. Travers and expecting them to memorize it is about as challenging as it sounds. [audience laughter] Malaysia is quite a culturally mixed place as well. And if Pam was not concerned with my lisp, it was only because she had about 20 different accents to deal with. [audience chuckles] Most notably our Mary Poppins, a 12-year-old Filipina girl, also by the name of Mary, with the voice of Whitney Houston, but the accent of a 12-year-old Filipina girl. [audience chuckles] 

 

You've not seen the true beauty of multiculturalism until you've seen a little Southeast Asian child belt a world class rendition of a Spoonful of Sugar before sternly telling Jane and Michael to brush their teeth’s. [audience laughter] But still, I'm enjoying the process. I'm getting a hold on the lines, I'm loving the songs, and always going swimmingly in Camp Phil until the day of the cast recording. We recorded a cast album. We were not messing around. [audience laughter] We recorded a full cast album, and its recording studio had just opened up in town, and its first signings were the children of Datuk Simon Fung Primary School. [audience chuckles] 

 

We bowl into this recording studio one by one. All the main cast, the singing roles, and each of the soloists go in to record their songs first, Jane and Michael, “If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition.” Mary goes in, “Stay awake, don't brush your teeth’s.” [audience laughter] And it was my turn. I bowl in, I swagger in with all the gust of a chubby 11-year-old boy, and I sing Mr. Banks’ song. I come back into the listening booth and they play it back to me. And that's when I hear it. My lisp, clear as day, no ambiguity about It. I found my lisp out in the cruelest of ways with the cruelest of songs. Mr. Banks big introductory solo starts, “I feel a thurge of deep thatithfaction, [audience laughter] much th a king athtride hith noble theed, have I returned from daily thrift to half and wife how pleathant ith the life I lead.” [audience chuckles] They gave the kid with a lisp a song that was essentially a tongue twister for kids with lisps. [audience laughter] 

 

Now, I'm appalled. I'm so, so terribly upset. First of all, because my mother had been proved right, and that's always dreadful. [audience laughter] But mostly, because this was the first time I had been shown that how I saw myself was not always the same as how I was seen by others. It was a bitter pill to take and I was just confused. Where did this lisp come from? Did I always have it? Had I just got so fat my cheeks had started growing inwards and [audience laughter] got in the way of my tongue? What I did know was I had to fix it, cue the rocky montage. 

 

At each of our many rehearsals, I'm sitting there, doing my lines, pulling my tongue painfully back behind my teeth where it doesn't feel right, hissing out this strange new sound with mixed results, feel a thurge of deep thatithfaction, thatisfaction. All the while trying to keep this a secret from my friends and the teachers. I'm practicing at home. It takes diligence, and practice, and determination. I battle this daily war against myself, this battle, this war against my own speech impediment. Strolling up and down the garden, practicing the lines out loud. “Ith that Poppinth woman. Ith Poppinth who'th done thith.” [audience chuckles] But I feel I'm making progress. 

 

Soon, though, time is up. The first night is fast approaching and eventually it does. And it's looking good. Preparations are coming together. The costumes are made, the cardboard hats are put on the heads of little pubescent Chinese boys. Mr. He has really outdone himself with a working carousel and flying chairs that are as incredible as they are terribly dangerous. [audience laughter] It really feels like the whole town's come together to make this thing happen. 

 

My mother also had her part to play. She was charged with the job of making-- Well, designing the front of a newspaper that I had to hold in one scene. And the Edwardian headlines she went for were, “Mrs. Pankhurst, Clapton Irons Again,” and “Titanic, greatest ship ever set sail from Belfast.” [audience laughter] Because my mother wants children to know two that women are equal to men [audience laughter] and that death is always around the corner. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

Pretty soon, the curtains rise and the play begins, the overture starts, and I stand there. Time is up, it's now or ever. Pretty soon, my entrance comes on and I bowl in. I strut onto the stage, bold, determined round. [audience laughter] I get my first few lines out before the first volley of S's hit. But hell, I go from “Money's sound. Credit rates are moving up, up. And the British pound is the admiration of the world.” I've done it. I've cured my lisp. I'm king of the S's. I'm on top of the world. And then, my song starts. My big introductory solo. And this is when I remember that we aren't singing the songs live. We can't be heard over the music and we're lip syncing, like it's RuPaul's Drag Race. [audience laughter] The underage, an Asian Special, [audience laughter] lip syncing, of course, to the cast album. 

 

And so, I have no choice but to go for it. In front of 300 people. I lip sync to, “I feel a thurge of deep thatithfaction. Watch ath a king athtride his noble thteed.” But you know it's okay because this serves as a reminder of what I had just overcome, this past self that I had fixed, corrected with sheer determination and force of will. What's more from the audience, a sound begins to ripple, a sound which I begin a long and vital addiction to laughter, [audience laughter] a sound which to this day makes me feel a surge of deep satisfaction. Thank you very much.