Mood: Bleh
Currently listening to: Lemon Tree - Fool's Garden

Yay! My first (seperate) posted review! Also got to write some up for Super Sapiens, DreamImage and The Girl Next Door, so those should come up soon... Or not. Meh.

Bear in mind that my overviews will be brief and general - i don't really intend to go into a blow-by-blow (or sob by sob) account of the entire thing, merely just various observations which i made.

Anyhow, tonight i went with my mother to the National Theatre to watch Hang Li Po: The Musical (boy does that tag seem weird, eh?). Here's a brief synopsis straight from the programme guide: Hang Li Po, a princess from the Ming Dynasty came to Malacca and married Sultan Mansur Shah. The love they shared crossed cultural boundaries and developed close meaningful relationships. Hang Li Po takes a glimpse into the history of the relationship between the Chinese Dynasty and the Malay Royal Sultanate. Fair enough. Website with comments can be found here.

The first thing that struck me were the simply BRILLIANT props and costumes which they used. Everything from the vastness of the Emperor's palace to the Sultan's golden Istana and the busy Malacca docks were superbly rendered and more than adequately set each of the scenes. On the other hand the acting, and especially the singing, was something else since the whole thing seemed to be entirely pre-recorded or dubbed (albeit well-dubbed). Not impressive. And to add to that, the entire play was either in Mandarin or Malay, which definitely caused me some significant difficulty in following the nuances of their speeches. Sure, there was a subtitle board in English (about 20m above the proceedings!) but the person in charge of that was either an incompetent retard or high on some illegal substance because the damn thing either lagged behind the conversation or failed to appear altogether for the most part. And the dancing! Or rather, not because there were too many such 'breaks', but due to the reason that some of these had no point to the storyline at all! For example, there's this dance routine they did which occurs when the Chinese envoys are travelling to Malacca with all sorts of routines, such as a sword display, which didn't add to the storyline at all in any way...

To their credit, the comic relief was very good and well done - from what my limited grasp of malay and the occasional English subtitle allowed me to deduce anyhow, but the audience's reaction to it was very good (and they should know better than me right?). The best performances were by far from the narrator and his comic sidekicks as well as the 'side narrator' (not sure what his title is but he speaks at the start, interval and end of the play - GREAT voice!). The rest of the cast were adequate i suppose, but nothing overly special i feel... (although special mention should be made to their choreography - good job!)

Another thing i noticed was the... er... propaganda that was somewhat apparent. Three main points here:

1. Malacca was prosperous but their reference to it as 'large, rich, and incredibly powerful' and its not so subtle hints that it was every bit as powerful as China may be a bit of a misnomer i felt. In reality i seriously doubt that the Chinese 'Heavenly' Emperor would have sent his only daughter down there to marry the Sultan (indeed, no records seem to exist of there being such a princess by that name - and apparently it literally means 'take to fuck' in Hokkien? Maybe the Chinese DID pull a fast one?).

2. This play portrayed a LOT of multiracialism undertones along the lines of 'Look! China and Malaysia are the best of friends!'. Much hugging, cavorting and general friendliness between both races were to be seen in this play... Hrmm, political undertones? (note: One of the sponsors is the Chinese embassy or somesuch)

3. There was this lengthy dance scene in which Malaccans were working and singing with words such as "Work! Work hard! Towards a better future!", "Reap the profits of our future and vision!" and so forth (i'm sure i screwed up the quotes but you get the picture). Yup, extolling the locals to work harder towards Vision 2020? ;)

Meh. This is as long as this review will get... Altogether, a good effort but Malaysian theatre still has some way to go - better scripting, acting, and less dubbing will get us there!

3.5 out of 5!