FESTIVAL ’90 : Thailand’s Folk Opera With a Twist : Likay: Troupe offers an updated and glitzy version of an ancient art form. Festival director Peter Sellars calls it ‘something wild and unpredictable.’

Traffic in Bangkok is nearly always chancy, but under impenetrable sheets of rain, it shuts down completely. The small road through Chulalongkorn University is clogged with motionless cars leaking onto their occupants, some of them trying desperately to get to the last Likay (Thai folk opera) performance of the season.

Meanwhile, the company waits out the storm, accustomed to improvising--on stage and off. Although scheduled to appear in an outdoor venue at 5:30 p.m., the stars of the popular Boonlert Sit Homhuan troupe sit impassively as curtain time passes and the production moves to an upstairs hall nearby.

Some of them wear the bejeweled costumes and headdresses of classical dance drama, but with expensive wristwatches where bracelets should be. A leading clown is costumed in jeans and a short-sleeved golf shirt (crossed clubs on the breast pocket), while nearly everyone, male and female, sports enough glamour makeup to make the flashiest vixen of the infamous Patpong district look virginal in comparison.

Soon, a bedraggled audience of mostly middle-aged women sloshes in, shedding shoes and grabbing floor-space on the edges of a platform stage dominated by a garishly painted throne-room backdrop. In a few minutes, Dr. Surapone Virulrak, dean of the university’s Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, appears to introduce the company and to solicit funds for its expenses at the Los Angeles Festival. (Boonlert Sit Homhuan makes its local debut tonight at 8 in a free performance at the Alhambra Park Bandshell.)

Privately, Virulrak apologizes to his American guests because this particular opera strikes him as “too classical.” He wants Los Angeles to see a Likay version of “Romeo and Juliet,” he says. Or, better yet, “Dallas,” with Boonlert Natpinit (actor/manager of the company) as J.R. Ewing.

Indeed, soap opera isn’t far from the style of the night’s magnum opus, a delirious saga of royal intrigue featuring music 120 years old (in some cases)--but crooned, pop style, into microphones. Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Animist and contemporary influences clash as often as the gongs or cymbals, and the cast takes the concept of personality-acting onto a stratospheric plane of excess.

Los Angeles Festival director Peter Sellars says he was attracted to Likay by the “really bright, lurid colors, the shift of proportions (performers who look gigantic against the underscale backdrops) and the up-front theatrical energy. They are here to provide something wild and unpredictable at the festival.”

In May, Sellars staged a controversial, Likay-influenced production of “The Magic Flute” at the conservative Glyndebourne Opera Festival in Sussex, England.

“I wanted to play into a popular opera tradition that we’ve lost from Mozart’s period but exists now in the streets of Bangkok,” he says, calling Likay “pre-psychological theater . . . theater that is able to talk directly to the audience.”

Speaking at his studio in suburban Bangkok a day after the university performance, Boonlert Natpinit also emphasizes Likay’s connection with the public. He is now 47 years old, and the company 31--but he says its popularity hasn’t changed either in Bangkok or the countryside since he took it over from his late teacher, Homhuan. And there are several hundred other groups now in Thailand, “more than before.”

Besides performing and writing, he teaches--every day--both group members and some outsiders. He says he doesn’t charge because he wants to keep the art going, and that it’s never difficult to find apprentices. “When they graduate from high school and can’t find a job, they can get room and board here and also a chance to learn--but not much pay,” he says.

Although he acknowledges that dance in Likay is mostly brief and “transitional,” he considers all the component disciplines equally important. “However, the most difficult thing to learn is the singing,” he comments. “The words must be clear, to get along with the rhythm and the tone.” A lot of the comedy is ad lib, he says, and he sometimes gives a signal to cut it off if it goes on too long.

He believes that Likay women characters are bolder and perhaps more independent than in other forms of Thai theater. But there are limits: “Some Likay troupes put in dirty jokes and other sexy stuff,” he admits--but not his company.

Unbidden, he brings up the age and physical shape of some of his stars--so different from the stereotype of the young, slender Thai performer.

“It’s not important to be thin,” he declares. “If you can sing and perform, it’s OK to be chubby.” He has 27 people in the company, ranging in age from 16 to 48, and while it’s crucial that the young leads be very attractive, he prefers using mature people who have the ability to perform up to his standards.

The wristwatches? “A recent tradition,” he answers. “The most valuable things the company members own are rings and watches, so they don’t want to leave them behind.”

The makeup? An old tradition--though false eyelashes represent “a new technology,” he says.

The company gives about 100 performances a year of 20 different works (sometimes in repertory), almost all of them traditional. Natpinit claims that he can prepare a wholly new piece in about seven days, but most often updates older works with topical references.

“Every time there’s a new prime minister, we pick up his words and mix them in the songs,” he says. “The audience recognizes them and laughs.”

“Before elections, local representatives of the government commission performances with special messages in order to get votes,” he continues. “Nasty things are said about opponents and nice things about sponsors.”

“In the suburbs, this will reach the people faster than any other kind of communication.”