Today I shall be posting about a little-known Malaysian musical that oh, maybe 0.1% of my flist knows about. (If I'm lucky.) Feel free to skip, for I ramble!
Its title is Puteri Gunung Ledang, which translated means Princess of Mount Ledang. It's based on a movie which was based on a Malaysian legend, and I've spent some time writing up its wiki entry here because despite how huge this musical was, apparently no one got around to typing up a decent article for it. Shame on you, M'sian wikipedians. :P
Now the thing about this musical is that it really is awesome. The sets are on par with high-end Broadway/West End productions, the music is superb, the acting is great and it generated fangirls and fanboys up the wazoo. For your musical sampling, here's Suatu Hari Nanti (Someday), the opening song. Musically it mostly falls back on traditional Javanese/Malay music, which in itself borrows a lot from traditional Indian sound.
( Lyrics plus their translation. )
I watched the musical four times because I really fell in love with the music and the sets/special effects are amazing that it's hard to believe it's a local production. Theatre doesn't have much of a pulse in my country because of a really dodgy local Arts & Culture Law that doesn't allow shows to be staged for more than a few weeks, but PGL: The Musical got off the ground because one woman: Tiara Jacquelina, the executive producer and star of the musical (and the movie it was based on).
Okay, there were dozens of other people involved, but anyone with half an eye can see that it was Tiara, with her high connections and moolah and industry strings, that enabled the musical to get made and not only that, get made with all the glitz and glamour that can easily rival any of the Disney theatrical productions. It's that elaborate.
See, PGL is a vanity project. Tiara got it into her heard to do an adaptation of an old Malay legend, and with her providing the backing, not only did she get it made into a movie AND a stage musical, she got to STAR in it.
It's like a Mary Sue got financial backing and went wild.
You see, I have an odd relationship with the show. I love it and would buy tickets in a heartbeat if it got staged again, but the thing that rubs me the wrong way is that the musical became so successful (in my country, at least) that this is the version of the Mount Ledang legend that people will remember. And it's not accurate in the least.
Western folktales have a much better track record at being preserved -- there are archivists and historians that go that extra mile to save old fairytales before they are lost, but Malay fairytales? Not so much. PGL the musical is destined to preserve the Legend of Gunung Ledang for future (Malaysian) generations, but man, they're going to miss the real point of the story.I want to be a historian and collect folktales.
It's like how I feel for a certain other Big Name Musical, but I won't get into that today.
Oddly enough, I don't feel such irksomeness with Disney's reinterpretation The Little Mermaid, because anyone who cares enough to read up the original story would be able to find it in a heartbeat.
Its title is Puteri Gunung Ledang, which translated means Princess of Mount Ledang. It's based on a movie which was based on a Malaysian legend, and I've spent some time writing up its wiki entry here because despite how huge this musical was, apparently no one got around to typing up a decent article for it. Shame on you, M'sian wikipedians. :P
Now the thing about this musical is that it really is awesome. The sets are on par with high-end Broadway/West End productions, the music is superb, the acting is great and it generated fangirls and fanboys up the wazoo. For your musical sampling, here's Suatu Hari Nanti (Someday), the opening song. Musically it mostly falls back on traditional Javanese/Malay music, which in itself borrows a lot from traditional Indian sound.
( Lyrics plus their translation. )
I watched the musical four times because I really fell in love with the music and the sets/special effects are amazing that it's hard to believe it's a local production. Theatre doesn't have much of a pulse in my country because of a really dodgy local Arts & Culture Law that doesn't allow shows to be staged for more than a few weeks, but PGL: The Musical got off the ground because one woman: Tiara Jacquelina, the executive producer and star of the musical (and the movie it was based on).
Okay, there were dozens of other people involved, but anyone with half an eye can see that it was Tiara, with her high connections and moolah and industry strings, that enabled the musical to get made and not only that, get made with all the glitz and glamour that can easily rival any of the Disney theatrical productions. It's that elaborate.
See, PGL is a vanity project. Tiara got it into her heard to do an adaptation of an old Malay legend, and with her providing the backing, not only did she get it made into a movie AND a stage musical, she got to STAR in it.
It's like a Mary Sue got financial backing and went wild.
You see, I have an odd relationship with the show. I love it and would buy tickets in a heartbeat if it got staged again, but the thing that rubs me the wrong way is that the musical became so successful (in my country, at least) that this is the version of the Mount Ledang legend that people will remember. And it's not accurate in the least.
Western folktales have a much better track record at being preserved -- there are archivists and historians that go that extra mile to save old fairytales before they are lost, but Malay fairytales? Not so much. PGL the musical is destined to preserve the Legend of Gunung Ledang for future (Malaysian) generations, but man, they're going to miss the real point of the story.
It's like how I feel for a certain other Big Name Musical, but I won't get into that today.
Oddly enough, I don't feel such irksomeness with Disney's reinterpretation The Little Mermaid, because anyone who cares enough to read up the original story would be able to find it in a heartbeat.
Mood: 
indescribable
indescribable5 took a breath # take a breath