Phantom oh Phantom

So today was the day I brought my Form 2 girls to watch the teathre Phantom of the Opera staged by the one of the private schools here.

When we arrived they were already many students around the area, once seated I was shocked to see that it was actually a full house. When the curtain went up, I was blown away by the props, the costumes and the backdrops .... but that is all the good things I can say as the play was below my expectation.

The night before I can't believe I was actually excited to go and watch the show, as I was told it's going to be a musical with live performance, I pictured live singing throughout the performance, live music like we had for our musical with the orchestra and the choir group but I was wrong.

No doubt they sang but like what.....4 songs, yes of course they had music but it came in shapes that look like a keyboard and an organ, and as I was told they are using Andrew Lloyd Webber's I was surprised to hear music from Kitaro, the Nutcracker and one Italian song where the fat man usually sings.

I guess due to the success of our musical, I expected too much from this production mainly because the students came from a private school, they had more money, they had native speakers as their English teachers, the tickets for the day were sold out, only to be let down by their horrendous performance.

I was often told a play is to be dramatised and to showcase acting and this play was often distracted by the narrator that appeared throughout the whole play. It was such an anti-climax everytime he appears. The casts had poor pronunciation Christina Daae (pronounced as Da yay) became Christine Day, Madame Giry (pronounced as Jee Ree) sounded like ikan tenggiri, Raoul de Changny (pronounce as change yee) became Raoul de Chadni (sounded like the gravy used in thosai), all the correct pronunciation that I've been teaching the girls for all these years went down the drain in a mere 2 hours.

Not only that they did not pay much attention to detail. First, the Box 5 is known as the ghost box but the two Comte and Vicomte actually sat there when in actual fact they should be seated in Box 14, I guessed the crew had forgotten to change the number which is not acceptable because it is a consider a crucial part in the story. The doctor wore a tail coat instead of the usual lab coat worn by doctors, we had to wait for quite a while for each segment although the props were all ready and the sound of the bell to signal the spotlight I find it to be an annoying sound.

I felt like it was a waste of time, some students felt they were deceived and robbed of their RM10, I feel bad because I encouraged them to go, I was restless throughout the whole show which I find it to be rare because I'm such a sucker for romance, but I was lucky to have my good friends with me, as we had a good time chatting and laughing.

I was impressed by a few of the casts though as they sang well.

Is it me or was our musical way better than this one?

Sigh!

*cough*I miss our school musical drama*cough*.