Comedy is a hard racket: There’s a fine line between finding offense, and pissing yourself with laughter, and ideally for the comic — you’re doing both at once.
Jason Leong is currently walking a cloud nine level of tight rope: A former doctor, turned full-time comic, he recently performed to sold-out crowds in Kuala Lumpur’s Temple of Fine Arts as part of his Ambitious tour.
Coconuts KL recently got to see his show, and can we say – without any motive or agenda – that it was the funniest Friday we’ve had in a long time. It had been a rough week, there was chaos in the lobby as the full house tried to make their way to their seats, but it was the best decision we made in the month of June.
Though we started the night thinking that we wanted to go home immediately after the show, Leong’s act had us laughing for over an hour — and we decided that it would be a shame to spoil the good mood by going home. And so, we went for a glass of wine. A glass turned into a bottle. That turned into another bottle (we weren’t alone, and it was a great red), and that turned into rounds of gin and tonics.
We woke up the next morning with a vague headache, but a wide smile — last night was FUN, and it started with laughter courtesy of Jason Leong. It was a five-star show.
Without revealing too much from the show, (ALERT: It will be hitting Hong Kong this month — GO GO GO, Hongkongers), Leong manages to transcend the typical Malaysian tropes, while still never losing the provenance of where his humor took root.
To live in Malaysia for any determined amount of time is to understand what it means to be heaty, whether by fruit or by foe; to be a medical doctor practicing in Malaysia is to constantly fight an uphill battle between science, and the undeniable fever one gets from a durian. It’s a struggle that is brought to life, and then some throughout Ambitious.
Leong has heard it all, he’s thought about it, wondered some more, and crafted weaving stories that take you through his mind, family and surroundings.
Casual racism in Malaysia is one thing, but there’s nothing quite like the casual racism Leong experiences when traveling across New Zealand, where it felt like the entire country had been warned that HE was coming.
It’s been a couple weeks and we still can’t get into our favorite joke, and while it would take the piss out of the whole thing to tell you more, we will say it involved a pilot, and an unaccredited university.
Malaysia is currently at the beginning of a great comedy renaissance, basking in the glory of a post-election détente where speaking you mind is no longer a crime. Malaysia Baru, the “New Malaysia”, is our Camelot. After decades of stifled speech, fear of laughing too hard, and making hushed jokes behind closed doors, the lid is finally off, and Pandora’s Box spilling serious tea.
Comics like Leong, storytellers, narrative weavers of topics that resonate beyond our own doorstep are here to show the world that while we may have been down, we were never out – we were just waiting for that green light to go there.
If you’re in Hong Kong July 28, you can catch Leong at Grappa’s Cellar.
Dr Jason will be touring with the Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians (MACC) featuring Douglas Lim, Kuah Jenhan, and Phoon Chi Ho from 18th to 23rd September at PJ Live Arts, Jaya One. Tickets at www.tix.my.
He also performs regularly in Kuala Lumpur. Catch his next shows HERE.
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