Vietnamese musicals confidently 'take off'

The performance was scheduled at Ho Guom Theater - the most splendid and modern stage in Hanoi.

This project was not started from a classic foreign script or following a trendy trend, and the creative team is not international, but all are... purely Vietnamese.

However, as soon as it was released, “Chi Pheo’s Dream” received attention and many compliments such as: A high-quality, creative Vietnamese musical; “Broadway-like, the Arias are very clear”. Especially at the 2024 National Song, Dance and Music Festival (phase 1) which just ended at the end of November, the excellent work topped the gold medal table…

With those guarantees, “Chi Pheo’s Dream” is confidently being released in theaters with “expensive” ticket prices; excluding the VIP price, the highest ticket is 2.5 million VND and the lowest is 700,000 VND.

In fact, for a neat 90-minute made-in-Vietnam musical to be able to sell tickets at such high levels is considered desirable, comparable to tickets to concerts and live shows that last several hours and require expensive investments.

Before “Chi Pheo’s Dream”, there were a number of theaters and art units that organized and performed musicals, but the ticket prices were never as “ideal” as this project of Thang Long Music and Dance Theater.

Usually, ticket prices stop at hundreds of thousands and cannot "surpass" millions of dong, and the shows are exploited quite modestly, popularizing a few times then falling into oblivion.

There will be an explanation related to the performance venue – a factor that greatly affects the actual entrance fee. However, after a period of time combined with experiencing and visiting the magnificent and modern theater, the final factor that retains the audience must still be the quality of the play.

If the quality is poor, no matter how splendid and magnificent the stage is, it cannot create miracles. As a result of serious and meticulous investment and clear goals, “Chi Pheo’s Dream” is said to have both of those factors to now be able to have such an impressive valuation.

Hopefully, the organization of the performance of “Chi Pheo’s Dream” will be successful, truly “creating a fever for listening to and watching musicals among the general audience” as musician Truong Ngoc Ninh predicted and will be a cultural and artistic product “creating an explosion for the chain of activities promoting Vietnamese culture and people to domestic and foreign tourists, aiming at exporting culture and the entertainment industry”, as the goal set by the leaders of the Hanoi cultural sector.

And from here, we can pave the way for pure Vietnamese musicals to confidently "take off" in a truly sustainable and long-lasting way.