Mich's Monologue: King & I, The Musical

King & I. Great movie, great storyline, great songs. But honestly, playing it out as a musical by high school students? I totally do not expect much from them. I mean, how good can they be? Life is far from what we see on television. The talents of Glee and High School Musical are rare in 'normal' schools. Since I have such a negative impression, you might ask why did I still went for the school play? Well, simply because the ticket is reasonably priced and I have always love all this arts and cultural stuff, so there is no harm going for it.

I was seated on the seventh row from the front which is pretty near to the stage. I was kind of happy because I thought I can snap great pictures of the backdrops and costumes. Notice the word 'thought' there? My handphone's camera is not good enough and the bright lights on stage made most of photos blurry.

I was very pleased to find that live orchestra will be accompanying the play and the orchestra members consist of 100% students of that school. Maybe because this event is a 'school thing', punctuality is very important (it's one of the value in moral studies, remember?). They started the show at exactly 8.30pm, as printed in the tickets with the appearance of the emcees for the night, also students from the school.

I was starting to warm up with the appearance of Anna, the female protagonist and the rest of the cast, fully dressed in their costumes.

Things start to heat up and the professionalism of the actors (students) on stage start to show when they really get into their character and when Anna started to sing. Her singing is simply flawless and lets do not forget she has to sing and act and dance at the same time. Wow, Penang has such great hidden talents.

Then the red curtain went up and the audience go 'oh-ah' over the breathtaking settings and backdrops on stage. More great singings and acting, and very soon we all fell in love with the characters on stage. We laughed with them, cried with them and sing along with them.

The highlight of the whole play was of course the romantic moments between Anna and King Mongkut which both actors played out with great chemistry. After the musical ended, the audience insisted on an encore and we got it. Another very talented girl rendered a wonderful love song while the two protagonist romantically dance on stage.

There was a scene where one of the concubines of King Mongkut played story-teller to the king and his honourable guest from England. The story she told has a fairy in it and due to all the lighting effects and my not-enough-mega-pixel-camera, the fairy in the following picture looks sort of like a real fairy.