You promised me ...

ISMAIL, The Last Days is a musical narrative of the last three years (1970-1973) in the life of Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman.

On the roller-coaster course of his political career, he rose to the position of Deputy Prime Minister and is largely credited with steering the nation back on course after the May 13, 1969 riots.

Currently staged at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre, the musical will run till Merdeka Day. These past few years, the month of August has typically seen the mushrooming of plays or musicals that trace the lives of our founding fathers. Following in the steps of Tunku The Musical, Ismail has large shoes to fill.

The production, which features music written by Datuk Johari Salleh and poetry by Datuk Usman Awang, is essentially a story about love and sacrifice.

The first attempt at a musical by writer U-En Ng, it is a work of interpretative fiction which is based largely on the biography of Tun Dr Ismail’s life called The Reluctant Politician by Dr Ooi Kee Beng.

Director Joe Hasham, working with Datuk Johari’s music under the direction of Mervyn Peters (who was also in Tunku The Musical), has managed to inject plenty of pathos and some comedic moments to the production. The audience was laughing at all the wrong parts of the musical. I’m not really sure whose fault that was.

While the orchestra outdid itself with a faultless performance, the question that begs to be asked is why the lyrics and tune of Do You Remember with the haunting lyrics “You promised me” was woven around the entire two-hour production?

Sung repeatedly in the first and second acts by the very capable Tisha Zarinah Zainal as Neno, the long-suffering wife of Tun Dr Ismail, the numerous pseudo-operatic repetition of the lines of the song became a source of mirth for the audience, seen chuckling under their breath.

This detracted from the main aim of Do You Remember, I Can’t Go On and He Love Me/She Loves Me, numbers surely intended to dramatise the main character’s trials in love.

Compounding my bewilderment was the incomprehensible lyrics.

Don’t get me wrong: The individual performances were brilliant. But collectively, the lyrics were sung as if they were just a bunch of words strung together to fit a tune.

The saving grace was the dialogue which managed to bring out the emotional intensity to the oft-times direct language in the script.

The script was an eye-opener to people of my generation, brought up in a culture of tactic acceptance and understanding of certain cultural taboos, juxtaposed against the spirit of the era the musical is based.

To echo the writer’s thoughts, today there is perhaps no place for a man such as Tun Dr Ismail who placed such value on his personal integrity, generosity of spirit and almost tyrannical standards of moral rectitude which are now alien in a culture that is grounded on principles of personal material advancement.

Ismail, The Last Days is a story that needs to be told. It got a few of the ingredients of the recipe right, in the costume and set design. If the aim of the musical was to provoke an interest and discussion into the life of Tun Dr Ismail, then it succeeded.

• Ismail The Last Days ends its run at KLPac on Aug 31. Tickets start from RM40. Call 03-40479000.