A night out at the theater

I managed to catch Puteri Gunung Ledang : The Musical on Thursday night, this time after missing out on the first one. This time there was no qualms that we paid good bucks for good seats ( Stephenie said it was on only 100 bucks!) and a good performance by the cast. The cast led by Tiara Jacquelina (Gusti Putri) & Stephen Rahman-Hughes (Hang Tuah) were excellent in delivering their performances on stage but i must say that A.C Mizal ( Gusti Adipati) was the star of the night as the Majapahit emperor where he exudes charisma on stage and brings the character of Gusti Adipati to live (albeit dramatic). The singing and song arrangement was good although the surtitles on top of the stage could be better placed ( we have to strain our necks to read it) but i can see that the second time around everyone seemed to be comfortable in their roles and enjoying it to full measure ( Adlin Aman Ramlie seemed to enjoy his tyrant Sultan Mahmud role ).

On a more serious note, i think this production has shown that a locally staged play/musical in Malay language can succeed as well or even better than the usual suspects such as Cats, Miss Saigon etc. It was done professionally and it was fantastic to think that the creative crew were all Asian with Tiara being the driving force behind it all. If only more future local Malay language plays/musical can be as good as this, i think we can expect to see more support as what we have seen with Puteri Gunung Ledang : The Musical.