Land of Smiles

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The likes of Alecky Blythe’s London Road have proven that, despite its sugary associations, the musical form is more than capable of chewing on meaty subject matter. When done well, the musical is as good a genre as any for communicating difficult ideas. When done badly, however, it can be little short of excruciating.

Land of Smiles falls into the latter camp. Its misguided attempt to shine a light on sex trafficking in Thailand is a painful demonstration of good intentions gone catastrophically awry, as fixed Broadway grins meet earnest pleas to recognise the complexity of the issues at stake. The problem is, complexity in this depiction is woefully lacking.

Erin Kamler’s show follows a young American NGO case worker who has hopped on a plane to Thailand with naive dreams of saving the world. But when she is set her first task—extracting information from an underage sex-worker from Burma—it turns out that matters are more complicated than they first appear.

It’s a classic Western moral dilemma, but the play is not a little offensive in its approach. It might be Kamler’s intention to skewer the American desire to swoop in and play hero, but in the process of doing so she manages to be just as patronising as those she attacks. The tone, which veers from spoof to tragedy, is problematically unclear, while there’s little evidence of all the research that has apparently informed the text. Bluntly acknowledging more than one facet to a situation does not amount to a sensitive portrayal.