Love without borders

Published on September 1, 2007

Despite a few technical flaws, the revival of "Koo Kam the Musical" excels, with a masterful script adaptation, beautiful music and lyrics, and captivating performances by the strong acting ensemble.

Playwright and lyricist Daraka Wongsiri has skilfully woven well-researched historical background material and thought-provoking war-and-peace arguments into the central story of a tragic cross-cultural love triangle between Kobori, Angsumalin and Vanas.

These relevance of these additions was enough to prevent this stage adaptation from becoming another cheesy romance, but they didn't take away from the spirit of Tamayanti's best-selling novel.

The three leads - Seigi Ozeki, Teeranai Na Nhongkai, and Worawit Fuang-arom - were triumphant in the roles they first played three years ago at the Bangkok Playhouse.

Their acting and singing hasn't lost any of its power in the interim, and they even added more details to their characterisations this time around.

"Koo Kam" also featured impressive performances by veterans Direk Amatayakul, Dur Doksadao and Chalit Fuang-arom, as well as vigorous performances from the supporting cast.

Although this musical drama was sung non-stop, it never sounded or felt like a concert. Not for a single moment during the two-act play did any performer turn full front to the audience and belt out their emotions. Instead, each concentrated on the interaction with their fellow actors. This fine-tuned and well-balanced acting and singing style - a technique employed by veteran director Suwandee Jakravoravudh - placed greater emphasis on the meaning of the drama than the showmanship of performers.

In the very first scene, friends and would-be lovers Vanas and Angsumalin sang "A Promise Under the Lampoo Tree". I was hooked straight away by their heartfelt and endearingly intimate performances.

Later on, when Kobori met Vanas in the latter's prison cell and they sang the duet "Is He the One You Love", I found tears running down my cheeks - the song perhaps a reminder of the many broken promises in my own life.

"Koo Kam" subtly drew the audience into its enchanting story of promises, love, war and death - silently yet firmly gripping hearts and minds from the very beginning and never letting go.

The costume design was appropriate for the play's World War II setting, and the lighting design, interestingly with no use of follow-spotlights, magically enhanced the tone and mood of each scene.

The production's major flaw was the rather sub-standard construction of sets - many of which were out of proportion - and the somewhat clumsy manoeuvring of its numerous changes.

The production team did their best to adjust the small and shallow stage of this cinema-turned-playhouse - raising its height, adding the set storage area in the side wings, extending the stage further into the audience to accommodate an orchestra - and in the process removed a few rows of seats, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of baht in ticket sales. Despite this valiant effort, they did not succeed.

Of course, the excellent acting, lyrics and music allowed the audience to overlook the flaws most of the time and the cast was rewarded with rapturous applause at the end of each performance. "Koo Kam" might not be perfect in its third stage reincarnation but that's hardly a crime.

However, the question remains as to whether Bangkok Theatre at Metropolis is really capable of hosting such a technically demanding production.

To be sure, the lack of a medium-sized playhouse that both meets the technical demands of theatre productions and at the same time provides a pleasantly intimate viewing experience for its audience remains a problem here.

Perhaps, we'll have to wait until the opening of King Power's Aksara Grand Theatre for a solution to be found.

The staging of several large-scale musicals in recent months has sparked enthusiasm among the mass media and the general public like never before. But this has also resulted in the setting up of two separate musical theatre camps.

If to you musical theatre means spectacular sets, costumes and lighting designs borrowed from Broadway shows, musical compositions that make you feel like you're at a pop concert, a script tarnished by television's tell-all mentality, TV stars, as well as high-octane acting and singing styles that add up to full-scale emotional assaults on the audience, then you can choose to watch Scenario's productions at Muangthai Rachadalai Theatre.

But if you prefer a meatier story, a better-structured script with wittier dialogue, better-quality musical compositions that fit with the period and style of each play, and a more realistic style of acting and singing, it's apparent now that you can trust this Dreambox duo, Daraka Wongsiri and Suwandee Jakravoravudh - formerly of Dass Entertainment. Their theatre skills and crafts gained through more than three decades of stage experience really show through.

It's worth noting that both

companies produce commercial theatre productions. It is just obvious that the latter knows and understands the differences between television and theatre better than the former.

Of course, which ticket you choose to purchase - and therefore which future for Thai theatre you want to see - is up to you.

Dreambox will stage the musical comedy "Sam Kloe" ("Three Pals"), adapted by Daraka Wongsiri from Po Intharapalit's famous fictional series "Phon Nikon Kim-Nguan", at Thailand Cultural Centre in February.

"Koo Kam the Musical" runs until tomorrow at Bangkok Theatre at Metropolis (sixth floor of EGV Metropolis). Showtimes are 2pm and 8pm. Tickets at Bt500 to Bt2,500 are available from Thaiticketmajor.

The writer can be contacted at Pawit.M @ chula.ac.th.

Pawit Mahasarinand

The Nation