Animal Farm

It's friday nite! I did not go for shopping, cinema, and neither staying at home to work on my assignments. However, I decided to went for a show 'Animal Farm' at KLPac.

Animal Farm is actually a novel by George Orwell, i think some of you might have come across this story right? In fact, i'm not one of them but i certainly will read it soon since my brother have also read before. Nonetheless, the casts of the show in KLPac are not American, European, or African. They were all Malaysians, yup locals! What I can say is, the story was good and though it was well performed by the actors and actresses.

This is symbolical narrative story where animals play the roles to start on a revolution to overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, Mr Jones. The animals yearn for an equal treatment thus they wanted to get rid of manipulated by the human and demand for equality among the large animals community that consist of pigs, horses, donkeys, ravens, mice, rabbits, and etc. There were seven rules founded on the animal kingdom, such as all the animals that walk with 2 legs are enemies except the birds, animals cannot sleep on bed, animals cannot kill each others, animals cannot smoke and drink, animals cannot have trading or communicate with humans,... and so on.. Nevertheless, class, status, power, and authority disparities emerged among the animals after the cruel and power addict pig, Napoleon rules the farm.

Basically, the story describes how the ideologies among the society can be manipulated and twisted by those who hold position in social and political power. Sometimes, even the lower class society can make a difference on the corrupting nature. There are people who display leadership, aggressive, sly, wise, vain, honest, dependable, firm and persistent in their characteristics. And these formed the society. You got no choice but to cope with the different masks that the people wearing.

In this story, Napoleon and Squealer are the bad one, and you will be so angry to see people with characteristic like Boxer, which is a horse in Animal Farm. He is loyal, kind and dedicated but naive. His ignorance and blind trust towards the leader that took along his profits and life will definitely makes you mad but still sympathized with him. Hmmm.. you will not want to be the one.

Move on to the feature, the stage design will absolutely fulfill you visual sense, together with the lighting design, costume design, casts, and MOST IMPORTANT is the music and sound!! Hahah.. music by BERNARD GOH.. Oh yaa! The cast.. i really think they did a great job on the performance. Their facial expression, body movements, the sounds... impressed!! Especially the horses, they are really real horses in human. When they walk, when they listen, when they talk, when they stay on a pose, you will find it really amazing if you watch. Napoleon, the pig, really a giant size pig, her fingers that make the pig's hoofs. And the donkey, Benjamin, wow his expression really like donkey, as well as the donkey sounds he made. and etc.. They are all really great. I wonder how they memorized the scripts as well.

The show is from 9 till 19 October 2008 in KLPac. If you do not want to miss the show you can visit here for more information. Don't worry, the show is in Chinese but with English surtitles.