Big Stage

A friend and I took in a Broadway-style musical here. Everything about it—script, set, singing, staging—was way better than it had to be. A world-class evening. And I don’t even like musicals.

I agreed to go because the story was based on a Thai epic, Four Reigns, that Jip and I read out loud in English some time ago. At least I’d be able to follow the plot when the show started to get overly artsy or amateurish, I figured.

Man, did this show ever explode my assumptions. The performers stunned me with their striking voices and movements. The scriptwriters faithfully adapted the most important episodes from the book, and cleverly stitched them together at a swift pace that engrossed me for nearly three hours. Even the scene changes, all done flawlessly on a spinning lazy-susan section of the stage, gripped me every time.

I’m really glad I saw this really good show. Yet a part of me also feels a bit ashamed that I hadn’t expected it to be so great. Its excellence exposed a prejudice that surfaces from time to time about Thailand’s abilities. Somewhere inside me hides the expectation that “Made in Thailand” means second-rate when it comes to the theater and other goings-on that I grew up viewing in a certain way. The whole home-grown evening has me wondering what else I’m shortchanging around here.