*****

Jop and Joy's lam rueang taw glawn performances are a very welcome change from their more superficial Mor Lam Panlai series. This is a westerner's idea of lam as it should be: each show is two discs of continuous lamming, with little spoken dialogue and no comedy routines; the band consists in its entirety of a mor khene and a mor saw; and Jop and Joy (especially Joy) give committed performances with all the emotional depth which the Mor lam Panlai lack.

The tale begins with a cockfight (real cocks, but no blood) then centres for the remainder of the first disc on a group of blind women who are not too happy with their lot. Joy appears only on the first disc; Jop doesn't appear until the second, but she dominates it by dying for almost forty minutes, after which the blind women regain their sight. If you prefer Joy, or you want to see the two together, then the earlier Pla Bu Tawng is a better choice. Highlights of the staging here include a man playing a horse, a classic lam glawn stick-on beard and a dead giant woman.

There aren't many real complaints to be made here. The video production is down to the usual Nopporn standards (there's an almost constant border of out-of-focus coloured lights), and because these aren't karaoke discs there are no subtitles to help you with the story. The two discs are sold separately, though unless you can follow the plot having only one of the discs isn't such a problem.

The more traditional forms of mor lam can be off-putting to anyone not born into it: it's much easier to digest an album of three-minute pop-lam songs than to get to grips with a two or three hour mor lam story. This series of lam rueang taw glawn performances is an excellent way in, removing some of the barriers that a western audience otherwise encounters. While Jop and Joy are just two members of the ensemble cast, they show here a side to their abilities which does not come through in their own albums. At least one of these shows should be part of any mor lam collection.

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