THE name Joanne Kam has become synonymous with sexual innuendos and overt risqué humour. Joanne, of Boom Boom Room fame, was an icon of the 1990s club scene, a fearless, confident woman who could whip grown men into submission.

Over the years, Kam has evolved into the  Malaysian Queen of weight loss and PG13 comedy. She returned last week with a show that promised to have you laughing till your sides ache, bopping your head to catchy music, and applauding wildly after fabulous song and dance routines.

Sadly, Queens and Kings and politicians have a history of not keeping their promises.

Things have changed since the Boom Boom days. We’ve evolved from monkey to man, discovered automobiles, mobile phones, sky scrapers, and the internet. We’ve also discovered mass email forwarding, and new jokes. But Joanne doesn’t seem to have kept up. From her cries of mock outrage (“Oh my God! What is your hand doing down there?”) at her audience members, to her recycling of tired old jokes, her stand-up routine felt wilted. The old telemarketing/direct selling gag has been making the rounds for years. Sure the joke is funny, and there is a minority some where out there that hasn’t heard it yet, but telling it in a stand-up routine is equivalent to using the cringe-worthy why-don’t-they-make-the-whole-airplane-out-of-the-black-box one. Needless to say, laughs were few and forced in Joanne Kam’s introductory stand-up routine.

The first act boasts pole dancing, short skirts, lots of cleavage, and Susan Lankester in awkward high-boots in a number titled “Whatever You Like”. Though a heterosexual female, I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that I quite enjoyed watching the back-up dancers slide up and down their poles, but Susan’s strained vocals and not-so-graceful attempts at sexiness were an unwelcome distraction. Not to mention Gavin Yap bouncing around gangsta style yelling “I know whachu wannn!” The song could have been cut out of a Pussycat Dolls album, which is always fun to ridicule and parody. However, the penny drops when it finally becomes obvious about two thirds through the song that it isn’t a joke, and Susan expects you to take her declarations of “I can do whatever you like” very seriously.

When the show was promoted as a musical comedy cabaret, they didn’t mean it was a fusion of the three. They meant it’s a cabaret-styled show, with attempted humour (in the form of skits) in between songs. And no, for the most part the songs weren’t comedic at all, unless you like laughing at dancers bumping into each other, or waving their arms around out of sync.

Throughout the show, most of the singing was painful -- either being out of tune or just plain nasal (read: Joanne Kam’s voice is a catastrophe that will outlast religion). Exceptions to this were, of course, Ina Fabregas, who was captivating in her solo numbers, Ash Nair (of Malaysian Idol), and Fang Chyi, whose smooth crooning was refreshing after the merciless squawking of the other performers. Douglas Lim also surprised with his polar bear hip-hop outfit and original rapping -- one of the few amusing parts of the play.

The two skits, “CSI: Petaling Street” and “Streets of Fire” left much to be desired on their own. “CSI: Petaling Street” is about, well, CSI! The spoof told the story of the Petaling Street CSI team who discover that the murder of a sexy young foreign girl is connected to the government trying to stop a new dental product from being released. The spoof had its moments (Fang Chyi yelling “Ho Lay Tiu!” repeatedly, for example), but otherwise was long and almost as painfully droll as Joanne’s stand-up.

“Streets of Fire”, though slightly more entertaining thanks to Ash Nair’s quirky badboy Indian accent and Douglas Lim’s particularly pervy kidnapper character, still failed to achieve hilarity. Both skits were like those parodies you did in high school for charity day, which everybody found hilarious back then, but which you cringe at the memory of nowadays. Thankfully, there were no Matrix-style fight scenes in this one.

In fact, the whole show had a high school fundraising kind of vibe. Agonizing song and dance routines and skits by the drama club that were just variations to the millions of skits students have done before. The only difference is this time the skirts are much shorter, the girls more attractive, and the costumes something out of  a Pussycat Dolls or Village People video.

Joanne Kam, whose reputation precedes her to the point where the audience automatically cheers when she walks on stage, has disappointed this time around. Hopefully, after some catching up with the Malaysian joke book (a week or so in the mamak should do it), she’ll be able to bounce back with something fresher, funnier, and far more original than song covers and burlesque dance routines. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to count more than four genuine giggles.

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Yasmin Zetti Martin writes for Kakiseni.

Kam...In Your Face runs from Thu 1 – Sun 11 May 2008 (8.30pm) at The Actors Studio @ BSC. Tickets cost RM102/ RM82/ RM62 (20% off for students & senior citizens). Click here for more details.