The EDGE Options interviews Nick and Colin

Follow the light
A reinvention of the traditional Christmas story
by Elaine Lau; The EDGE Options, December 6, 2010


The celebration and tradition of Christmas exists today because of an event that took place more than 2,000 years ago — the birth of Jesus Christ. The story of this remarkable event has been repeated through the millennia, all over the world. It is one of the greatest stories ever told, and to this day, it continues to intrigue and enthral.

The story centres on Mary, Joseph and the birth of Jesus, and the struggles they went through leading to that joyous event. Other characters include the wise men of the East, who followed a star to find the baby, and the shepherds who received a heavenly announcement about the birth.

This December, Kirton Call Productions and Nick Knack Productions are staging a reinvention of this story in the musical theatre production, Follow the Light. The libretto, music and lyrics are written by Nick Choo, with actor and director Colin Kirton directing and producing the musical.

Says Choo, “The way I approached the material was with a mass appeal. There was very little effort at preaching, evangelising or trying to convert anybody... Even though the theme is religious, it isn’t a religious story. A lot of [creative] liberty has been taken with the material.”

Choo first staged the musical in 2005, while he was a student in Australia, and it won second place for best musical in Western Australia’s Finley Awards for Independent Theatre. Choo received a special adjudicators’ certificate for overall achievement (music and lyrics). Upon returning to Malaysia in 2006, he went about finding someone to work with to stage it here. He found Kirton, artistic director of touring theatre company Footstool Players, and a veteran of stage and screen.

Kirton says it was the calibre of the music and lyrics that attracted him to the musical. “A lot of musicals done here in Malaysia are relatively straightforward musically. I’ve been in some of them myself, so I know,” he says. “With all due respect, they’re great musicals, but they don’t push the limits in terms of musicality... This show has intricate harmonies woven right through it. You will hear a lot of complex harmonies, as you would in a choral production, and a lot of things happening musically at the same time. I think it says a lot for Nick’s ability to weave words and music together, even rhymes and rhymes within the rhymes. It’s just quite crazy what this guy has come up with. And that’s what particularly drew me to the piece when I first heard it. I thought, ‘Wow, this has quality’. Not to say it can’t be improved — there’s always room for improvement — but there was a base here that shows talent and quality. And that was one of the reasons I said ‘yes’ to working on the project.”

Kirton pointed out areas to Choo that needed to be reworked, such as introducing more variety in the music. The original had a lot of rock, as it was billed a rock musical, but the new version has songs that range from pop, rock and funk, R&B and hip-hop, to jazz, gospel and emotive ballads.

Another area was in developing the characters, where much creative liberty was taken to do so. The shepherds, for instance, are cast as siblings and the wise men are guys who grew up in the slums.

Choo elaborates, “One of the key things I wanted to highlight were the shepherds and wise men, as there’s not very much known about them. There were some back stories created just for these characters in the original 2005 version but I never explored their relationships and characterisation further. A lot of development that has taken place in the rewriting has been to flesh out these characters — give them more storyline and juicier subplots to work on. In doing that, the music also changed.

“That’s the key — it’s not just about the Christmas story anymore, it’s about relationships. The young couple, in love and preparing to get married, and suddenly there’s a baby in the mix and it’s not even his baby — how do they deal with that? The shepherds — we’ve got sibling rivalry, a younger sibling craving the respect of an older sibling.”

Adds Kirton, “Another theme is ambition and significance. Mary has her dreams and suddenly she has a baby on the way. Joseph, who has his plans for this child, and Mary reminding him that God has other plans. There’s the downtrodden shepherd boy who wants respect. We have the wise men, cast as three guys from the slums looking for their glory in life, who think the star will lead them to their significance.”

The musical is made up of a varied cast of both established performers and theatre practitioners as well as newcomers. AIM award-winning singer Juwita Suwito plays the role of Mary, singer-musician Aaron Khaled is Joseph, and American stage director and performer Tim Howe is the angel Gabe. The shepherds comprise singer, vocal coach and musical theatre performer Zalina Lee, former Malaysian Idol finalist Rydee Anna Abdul, and talented newcomer Adrien Zaffri. The wise men are AIM award-winning R&B recording artiste Liang, stage and television actor Xavier Fong, and up-and-coming singer-songwriter Tony Leo Selvaraj. And the angels, who serve as storytellers uniting these ragtag characters, are established musical theatre performers Suzan Manen, Annie Too, Song-fan Seah and Nicole Ann Thomas.

At turns poignant and dramatic and at others self-deprecatingly humorous, Follow the Light is a show for everyone. Says Choo, “At the end of the day, going back to the whole reason I did this, it’s not about [beliefs]. It’s really a story and this is our take on the story. And like all theatre, you want to be moved, you want to laugh and also just be entertained. It’s the Christmas period and it’s just something to commemorate the season, to add more to the celebration of the season regardless of what you believe in.”

Kirton adds, “This is very much a landmark production for our country. We live in a time where unfortunately our country is very divided religiously and racially. There are so many sensitivities associated with the whole area of religion. We’ve encountered them even as we tried to mount this production. I’m thankful we have a multi-religious, multi-racial cast that really reflects the variety of who we are as Malaysians coming together to put on this show. I hope the audiences who come will leave with a sense of the fact that we have individual stories that may seem separate, but really we have a shared humanity. I hope it will make a powerful statement in modern-day Malaysia, where we’re at now on our own journey as a country, that we can come together, enjoy and celebrate and identify with the themes that come up in the story.”

Follow the Light runs until Dec 19 at PJ Live Arts, 2A-3, Block K, Jaya One, Section 13, No 72A, Jalan Universiti, PJ. Tickets are priced at RM75 and RM55. Call the box office at (03) 7960 0439.