This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 21, 2015.
IT is not an unfamiliar premise — a girl from the kampung ventures wide-eyed into the big city, finds love, gets hit by reality and ultimately, devastation. Yet SIBKL’s Esya The Musical (pronounced Ee-Sha) should not be easily discounted as a contrived been-there-done-that story. After all, it is said to be based on real stories of young Malaysian girls from the interiors of the country.
There are even statistics shown to back up its gritty subject. What can be said about this Christmas musical, however, is that it is not quite the status-quo festive production. Director cracks a small smile when that is pointed out. Alongside writer Timothy Wong, both sat down with live it! for a chat before its first show — a full-dress rehearsal preview opened to the public.
“I mean it depends on what you think Christmas is,” says Jayne. “To many, it is about shopping and celebrations, having a good time. But Christmas is about love, the gift of love … and this story deals with humanity, people who are crying out for love.”
The opening scene sees a bright and energetic but restless Esya singing about her mundane life and the expectations of a daughter, as her mother and a meddling neighbour echoes with upbeat platitudes of keeping one’s lot in life. But quickly enough, there’s an undercurrent of tension between the teenager’s mother, her drunkard step-father (her mother’s third husband) and Esya herself.
In the next scene, Esya gets harassed and manhandled by the local boys while making a delivery from her mother’s food stall. Soon she is rescued by her best friend’s cousin, Balang, from the city, who himself has a broken past. While Balang becomes the main antagonist in the story when he prostitutes Esya, his own background and the well-researched crafting of the duo’s relationship dynamics gives the story a more complex dimension.
The director admits that it was a measured risk to take on a rather unpopular topic, especially for a church-based production, but felt that the issue was pertinent.
“We are living in such a time where there are too much grey areas between right and wrong, even from top down. I think we need to address that,” Jayne expresses. “Considering that Malaysia is a conservative country, prostitution among youths is quite rampant, especially in East Malaysia,” where the story is loosely set in.
The name Esya came to the book writer Timothy suddenly as he was walking to meet Jayne for a discussion. After the story was proposed, the Monash University lecturer took about a month to produce the first draft. The story centres on choices, he adds. “I have a tagline, ‘freedom is a heartbreak away’, and it’s really how we want freedom, but it is only when we go through pain, suffering and ultimately, heartbreak, that we arrive there. Then, it’s often not quite what we imagined, but after that, we have a chance to gain true freedom.”
Timothy also wrote the lyrics for the 10 to 11 original songs excluding reprises, working together with award-winning composer Nick Choo. The close working partnership paid off, with the songs and spoken dialogues — there are three purely spoken scenes — transitioning well. A pleasant listen and necessarily stirring when need be, the lyrics simplistic and colloquial style brings a sense of continuity to the flow, adequately delivering the story with clarity.
The young cast, barring a few veteran theatre-practitioners, holds up well for their relative inexperience, with some show stealers — young Matteo Cigala, for example, as Esya’s younger brother — and an overall solid delivery.
One pitfall the production team was keen to avoid was coming across overbearingly preachy, and it largely succeeded, showing restraint its handling of overarching spiritual and moralistic values. One wonders, however, if in their efforts they might have gone too far, missing a few chances to create a stronger impression in certain moments, not quite hitting the nail in the head when it comes to probing intentions and confronting decisions on a deeper level.
There were also hardly any space to linger in the two-act story. In one moment, Esya sits in the rain contemplating where her life had led her, in what should have been the defining moment in the story. While the dancers have done a great job throughout, the impact of the moment is lost in favour of a stylistic choice that distracted from it.
One of the larger-scale musicals staged in Kuala Lumpur this year, Esya The Musical utilises multimedia, props, impressive film clips and even designer costumes by Malaysian designer Keith Kee, in a production of over 100 people and a cast of 21. This makes for an entertaining musical with the works, if nothing else.
But there is definitely more on offer than just that in this realistic, contemporary tale. Jayne and Timothy point out that it also reflects the true, biblical, Christmas story, “The sense of rejection, issues that people do go through in their life’s journey, It is about relationships, fractured relationships … and at the end of the day, the core Gospel story is about showing love,” says Jayne.
Catch Esya The Musical until Dec 24 at SIBKL, SunwayMas Community Centre, Jalan PJU 1/3G, SunwayMas Commercial Center, Petaling Jaya. Showtimes are 8.30pm and 2.30pm, for more information and ticketing details, email [email protected] or visit www.sibkl.org.my.