Malaysian playright Kannan Menon says he wrote " Fireside Story" as well as the lyrics, and the music was composed by an American Peace Corps friend, Jim , whose last name escapes me now.
Crossing that bridge
Undercurrents flow when two men meet at a plank bridge in rural Malaya. MARTIN VENGADESAN e-mails the playwright who stirs the action.
UNLESS you’re a devoted fan of local theatre, the name Kannan Menon is unlikely to mean anything to you. After all, the Kuala Lumpur-born lawyer has spent most of the last 30 years in the United States, where he currently practises in New York
Among Menon’s theatrical contributions is A Fireside Story (touted as Malaysia’s first musical when it made its debut in 1970). A more recent work, At a Plank Bridge, will take centre stage at Silverfish Books, Kuala Lumpur (03-2284 4837), come Saturday, in the form of a reading by actors Mano Maniam and Chew Kinwah.
Kannan Menon: Raises questions about the war years.
The play, which made its debut at the Theater for the New City in New York in January 2003, tells of two men who meet “at a plank bridge” on a rural road in Malaya just after World War II. The Japanese have just surrendered, the British have yet to return. The men are on their way to Singapore, and each has secrets that, when revealed, will cause their destinies to collide.
I managed to get some pertinent information from the globe-trotting Kannan, who responded from Christchurch, New Zealand, to my questions via e-mail.
“At a Plank Bridge ran for three weeks, the allotted time under the Theater’s Emerging Playwrights programme. It had tremendous response from the audience. The encouragement we received was tremendous, especially from people like David Henry Hwang, Sam Cohen, Diane Weist, Eve Friedman and Ming Cho Lee.”
Indeed Menon intends to re-stage the play in New York at a later date, but for now, he feels that a Malaysian airing is more imperative. “We are looking to do a longer run sometime later, but first, we (the producer, my wife Girija Menon, the director Tina Chen, and I) feel it needs to be seen in Malaysia.
“It is a Malaysian play set at the end of WWII. What happens to the two characters, Chandran and Fook Leong, during their encounter on a lonely country road, encapsulates some of the critical encounters of the turbulent war years. At the same time, the play raises questions about how much and what we remember of such events. How do we arrive at a truthful reconstruction of such events? Who controls history? All this is woven in the dramatic encounter between two people, each of whom has burdens and secrets.”
Menon has been active in theatre since his teens.
“My first play was Ties, which I directed at St John’s (Institution) in KL in 1968. I was a Lower Sixth student there then. Subsequently, I wrote The Lifelong Aim, which was staged at the Malaysian Drama Festival at the end of the same year, featuring Bosco D’ Cruz.
“I wrote several plays which were produced over Radio Malaysia by Mustaffa Sherrif. I can’t remember the titles off the top of my head. I have acted in numerous productions and directed other plays, like Waiting for Godot; A Government Inspector; The Liar and Loot.
“After I went to study theatre in North Carolina, I wrote an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, which toured the city schools of Salisbury, North Carolina. In 1976, I graduated with an MFA in stage directing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, one of the two top theatre schools in the United States. From that point on I concentrated on directing rather than acting.
“I did continue to write, but in one of the curious twists of fate, I only got serious about writing after I came back to Malaysia in the 1990s, as a lawyer. I first directed The Odd Couple in 1994 for the KL Rotary Club. Next I did Witness for the Prosecution, and The Owl and the Pussycat in 1995. I also wrote and directed the political satire Haze Fever in 1997.”
It was hard to resist asking Menon about A Fireside Story. After all, it’s not as if Malaysian musicals are a dime a dozen.
"A Fireside Story was a political satire told in symbolic terms through dance and three or four songs. It’s about the immediate aftermath of the May 13 riots of 1969. It was performed at the Universiti Malaya’s Experimental Theatre in 1970. I wrote the play as well as the lyrics, and the music was composed by an American Peace Corps friend, Jim , whose last name escapes me now. It was produced under the name of the Free Theatre Group, a company started by my friend Radhakrishnan Nair and I. It was reviewed then as Malaysia’s first musical.”
One of my pet gripes about the local scene is that our plays almost inevitably display a higher standard of writing and acting than our movies and I would like to see the best performances captured on film (ideally with some minor allowances to meet the demands of the cinema.) Would Menon be averse to a film version of At a Plank Bridge?
“Wow! Wouldn’t that be great? At A Plank Bridge is eminently suitable for adaptation as a film.”
He seems pleased that Mano will be reading the part of Chandran at Silverfish.
“Mano is quite simply the greatest actor on the Malaysian stage today, and a world class thespian. I have worked with him on a few productions, including Witness for the Prosecution, in which he gave an astounding performance.”
