“The Swordfish, Then the Concubine” by Kee Tuan Chye

The drama “the Swordfish, Then the Concubine” written by the famous writer, Kee Thuan Chye. This drama seems very easy for me because of the good issues raised by the writer is related to our daily life. Even though it seems to be an easy drama I cannot understand some part of the play for instance the significance of the characters of Ris Kaw and Logod. Who are they? Are they human? Fortunately, Dr Edwin solve my problem by explaining that Ris Kaw and Logod are virtually time traveller. Both of them are people who seem not to be in the part of the play and their job is to alert us, representing cotemporary voices. That was what Kee Tuan Chye actually wanted to convey through Ris Kaw and Logod.

These thing make me realised that I need to pay full attention while reading the drama because to prevent me from missing the significant events and underlying meaning of the speeches. The language used by Kee Thuan Chye is not as difficult as Shakespeare’s language. I can finish reading the whole play just for two hours because I can easily understand the language used in this drama. The most interesting part about Kee Thuan Chye is, he always put the current issues in his literary works. We can easily see in this drama whereby he puts the theme of the foolishness of the royalty and political institution. This drama is full of socio-political comments to criticize the failures of both royalty and political system to uphold their nation at the highest level. This political satire play is interesting to read while looking at our political situation nowadays. Because of this, I used this drama in my second assignment whereby I did examine the treatment of the theme of the foolishness of the royalty and political institution in “the Swordfish, Then the Concubine”.

After reading the whole drama, I gave five stars out of five stars to this drama because this drama deals with the current issue which is hard to be found from the other literary works. I just received a good news from Dr Edwin saying that Kee Thuan Chye will come to University Putra Malaysia. I am looking forward to see him as I want to ask him several questions related to his literary works.