Pictures courtesy of Jeff Ooi.
Yes, managed to the catch it over the weekend. I think Malaysians are so starved for good and lavish theater that we are very forgiving. If you've read reviews of P. Ramlee in both The Star and NST, you can see that all comments about the storyline, etc. were quite disappointing. It's true there were loopholes, and characterizations were very loosely based. The focus was really the staging of the musical - the sets, costumes, songs, etc., which to some extend covered up for the weak storyline. I suppose they decided to distract the audience from the story.
I actually liked PGL much more. The music was good, but I agreed with The Star's review it was a weird mix between TYPICAL musical sounds (Jeff Ooi calls it Pocahantas-like) with amazing P. Ramlee's composition, and it didn't work for me.
I couldn't really pin-point what was missing, but I left the theater feeling disturbed and lacking. The only portion that I felt was real and really reminded me of P. Ramlee was in Act 2 where he was courting Saloma. I loved that whole bit - so like P. Ramlee in his movies. The rest was quite forgettable especially the Penang scenes with when he was a kid. There were no show stealers there. The child-actors did not sound natural at all, and Siti's bit was small, but compensated by her voice. My first time hearing her sing live, and I can't deny she has an amazing voice.
Sean Ghazi seemed to only get into the role towards the end, which was quite disappointing coz I was really excited to see him perform. Liza Hanim was a real surprise to me - may be because I didn't have any expectation of her. She was natural, and her voice was really amazing. But sorry to say la I really couldn't understand the hype over Melissa Saila (the crowd was just going nuts). I wonder was just because she is related to Saloma...Her character was one of the most developed and she had a range of emotions to display which was good, but her voice was really bad...you can hear pitching semua lari beb! And I am no music critic, ok!
All in all, it was an ok way to spend 3 hrs or so...but I did find some parts very draggy and unnecessary. I guess I kinda feel cheated because I left the musical not knowing more about P. Ramlee, and didn't get the full appreciation of his songs and work.
And let's not open topic of how incompetent Istana Budaya is...that's is a whole other diatribe!
