We went to see Ramli Ibrahim at KL Pac last night, accompanied by a couple of friends, a Malaysian Chinese woman and her Finnish husband. The place itself, an old railway yard I think, was lovely. Peaceful and green, speckled with lakes. It had rained earlier so it was very cool and damp, with yellow and peach flowers fallen from the trees. The lakes were full of fish and turtles (and one monitor lizard), while the trees were filled with koyel and lovely shimmering blue and green birds. It felt, more than at any other time, that we were in the Malaya of the old Colonial era writers.
Dinner was at a Thai restaurant overlooking the lake. A beautiful spot but the food was mediocre and overpriced. I feel that there is a platonic ideal of Thai food that I remember from my trip there in 2006 but that I’ve not had since. Nothing has matched the vibrancy and freshness of those meals, not even on my most recent trip to Thailand. I wonder if it’s because that time I was an impoverished backpacker and this time I was well to do enough to go to a higher class, but perhaps more watered down, type of restaurant? But this place was quite poor.
The performance itself was good, though lacked the flair of Ramli’s Ganjam last year. Even Ramli himself looked a bit flat by comparison to the vigour and energy, and precision, at that performance. One of the curious features was how they included the child performers. There was something about the costumes and make up, and the choreography itself, that made them appear to be miniature adults, not children at all. Since they were there as a sort of emotional chorus, or as crowds around the central lovers, that was effective. Though the gentleman friend felt that they had the awkward movements and lack of grace characteristic of children, and that it disrupted rather than added to the dance.