Review: SILVER'S TOUR: THE MUSICAL – An Unfocused Take on a Good Concept

(Review written by Nabila 'Hana' Hananti, edited by Rakaputra Paputungan)

On the 22nd of August 2024, as part of the 22nd LSPR PAC Festival, class PAC25-1SP “Meraki Production” brought Silver’s Tour: The Musical on stage. Performed at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta, this show was delivered as their final assignment in their 6th semester for the subject: Plan & Production Management.

The show is an original musical play written by Calvin, Audrey, and Gracia. Efraim Stevano and Cherry Angelie served as the producers of the show. Last but not least, Silver’s Tour: The Musical was brought to life by the directors: Calvin Rusli, Divya Zalfa, and Ra Magia Rachmat.

Silver’s Tour: The Musical tells a story about the Silver Family and the incident that happens on the ship during their eponymous travel agency’s tour. The story focuses on the daughter—Susan’s—relationship with her adoptive parents, Dona and Xavier Silver. Love, insecurity, and inequality become the highlight of Silver’s Tour: The Musical.

Beautiful harmonization started the show with a spooky song that introduced one of its main characters. However, that seemed to lead nowhere as the realist dialogue readily disrupt the spirit that the powerful intro brought. Eventually, Silver’s Tour: The Musical introduced their world through expositions – a lot of them. The dialogue was all expositions. The songs they brought were expositions, and most of the conflicts were carried through expositions as well, breaking the major rule of storytelling: show, don’t tell.

While the show’s initial focus was on the introduction of the MC and owner of the Silver’s Tour, Xavier Silver, the songs that came up after were songs that introduced the Silver’s Tour itself. And, instead of framing them as something under Mr. Silver’s rule, they mostly stood as stand-alones filled with colours and fun choreography. It served as great entertainment, but as I was watching, I felt that it was a shame that the production had to focus on the relationship between the Silvers.

This is due to the Silver’s Tour effective introduction that made me more interested in the travel agency instead of the characters they introduced to us earlier. But, they decided to focus on the characters – and it’s delivered through expositions by gag characters. Typically, comedy works best when it’s intertwined with the writing. However, when the characters were paraded around without a purpose in the story, it came across as bland and felt like an ‘inside joke’ that the audience wouldn’t get. Everything was just loud and dizzying. It became merely an attempt at spectacle.

The show jumps so readily from song to song to song, in an apparent effort to showcase the many different creative talents that contributed to this production, with very little narrative pull. These numbers were indeed entertaining. However, the moment the show returned to exposition or dialogue, it became almost excruciatingly bland. Therefore, as a unified work of art, the play didn’t work all that well.

Multiple avoidable technical interferences also plagued the play. There were plenty of audio errors and slow (and distracting) moments during the changes of the set. The lighting was beautiful, but it made for quite a distraction when it was aimed towards the audience’s sightline.

Final exams are hard work and the results are often a hit or miss. Silver’s Tour: The Musical – regardless of its artistic merit – had been proof of teamwork from everyone involved in the performance. They successfully delivered two shows that day, and they should strive to improve their future productions, and eventually, be part of the growing industry that is the musical theatre.

To post a comment, you must register and login.