Puteri Gunung Ledang-The Musical
Wow-it's an amazing three hour show. Absolutly brilliant!!! The music is haunting and singing surprisingly good. The main actors were stunning-Tiara looked wonderful and Stephen was real impressive. Imagine-the guy couldnt speak Malay a year ago, and now he's speaking like a true-blue Melayu. No trace of a foreign accent. And good looking to boot.
I've never seen the movie, but like everyone else i've heard of the story of puteri gunung ledang-the proud and beautiful princess who artfully rejected the marriange proposal of the amorous Sultan Mahmud of Melaka by setting almost impossible conditions for him to meet. If you still remember your form 5 kerusi-it's all there. They took some liberties with the story though and added starcrossed lovers: Hang Tuah and the Princess: Gusti Puteri. the love story bit is typical-Beautiful princess dreams of love and adventure, trapped within the four walls of the palace by the king ( who perchance is her brother ). Falls in love wih a foreign emissary after some intellectual bantering, because of political turmoil princess has to marry king of foreign land, loyal emissary torn between love and duty, unrequited love, dead nanny, in the end princess doesnt have to marry king instead chooses to spend the rest of her life in isolation on a mountain.
Think something like Tristan and Isolde, but between Majapahit and Melaka rather than Ireland and England. Still, it's a classic story and theme, so there's not much that can go wrong. And i love the malay take and twist on the whole thing. The use of pantuns, rhymes and innuendos, the delicacy of the malay language-even though there were very good subtitles they didnt catch the nuances that you get in the original malay.
I loved the dancing in the musical. There's loads of indian and indonesian influences with the puteri's dance-some great solo pieces that goes so well with the haunting dream like gamelan music. The group dances were good too-loads of energy combined with real vibrant music....And there's this once sequence involving the Sultan Melaka that was outright hilarious. Seriously super funny. There's some experimental/modern dance pieces-and i love the way they used a minimal set- and the dancers have to move these large set pieces around...hahahah...
And they use white cloth to represent water-there was one scene where the princess was running through the surf to get into the boat tha looked real good-all they used were billowing white cloth and a fake sail (and some strong men to lift princess up and down like she's sailing)...
It was a great showlah, to put simply. I even got a CD single-and i got it signed. Will post photos when i manage to get them up. had a massive row with my dad about the new camera. I keep on telling him the auto focus red light drives me crazy because it blinds my subjects, but he insists that its good and excellent. We managed to agree to disagree about it to enjoy the musical-Thank god!!!!!
Wow-it's an amazing three hour show. Absolutly brilliant!!! The music is haunting and singing surprisingly good. The main actors were stunning-Tiara looked wonderful and Stephen was real impressive. Imagine-the guy couldnt speak Malay a year ago, and now he's speaking like a true-blue Melayu. No trace of a foreign accent. And good looking to boot.
I've never seen the movie, but like everyone else i've heard of the story of puteri gunung ledang-the proud and beautiful princess who artfully rejected the marriange proposal of the amorous Sultan Mahmud of Melaka by setting almost impossible conditions for him to meet. If you still remember your form 5 kerusi-it's all there. They took some liberties with the story though and added starcrossed lovers: Hang Tuah and the Princess: Gusti Puteri. the love story bit is typical-Beautiful princess dreams of love and adventure, trapped within the four walls of the palace by the king ( who perchance is her brother ). Falls in love wih a foreign emissary after some intellectual bantering, because of political turmoil princess has to marry king of foreign land, loyal emissary torn between love and duty, unrequited love, dead nanny, in the end princess doesnt have to marry king instead chooses to spend the rest of her life in isolation on a mountain.
Think something like Tristan and Isolde, but between Majapahit and Melaka rather than Ireland and England. Still, it's a classic story and theme, so there's not much that can go wrong. And i love the malay take and twist on the whole thing. The use of pantuns, rhymes and innuendos, the delicacy of the malay language-even though there were very good subtitles they didnt catch the nuances that you get in the original malay.
I loved the dancing in the musical. There's loads of indian and indonesian influences with the puteri's dance-some great solo pieces that goes so well with the haunting dream like gamelan music. The group dances were good too-loads of energy combined with real vibrant music....And there's this once sequence involving the Sultan Melaka that was outright hilarious. Seriously super funny. There's some experimental/modern dance pieces-and i love the way they used a minimal set- and the dancers have to move these large set pieces around...hahahah...
And they use white cloth to represent water-there was one scene where the princess was running through the surf to get into the boat tha looked real good-all they used were billowing white cloth and a fake sail (and some strong men to lift princess up and down like she's sailing)...
It was a great showlah, to put simply. I even got a CD single-and i got it signed. Will post photos when i manage to get them up. had a massive row with my dad about the new camera. I keep on telling him the auto focus red light drives me crazy because it blinds my subjects, but he insists that its good and excellent. We managed to agree to disagree about it to enjoy the musical-Thank god!!!!!
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