The past few years have seen a plethora of musicals staged in Bangkok and taught us that Thai audiences love watching stories they already know, or, in the case of jukebox musicals, listening to songs with which they are familiar. But do we like to watch – and pay for – stage versions of TV comedies and dramas?

Let me put it another way. Would you rather blow Bt7,000 on two tickets for a stage production so that your wife can see the musical adaptation of the romantic comedy she enjoyed on TV two years ago or use it to pay for a new TV set so she can watch whole series on YouTube?

Musical Musicals, the producer of charity concerts as well as “Cixi Taihou: The Musical”, obviously believed we’d do the former. The turnout at the second Friday performance of “Love Game: The Musical” – “Kuan Khan Thong” in Thai – proved them wrong, with many tickets given away just to (half) fill the seats at K-Bank Siam Pic-Ganesha. It’s evident that in this economy, we have to be pickier. In other words, what belongs to free TV should stay there.

Adapting the 14-episode “Kuan Khan Thong Khap Gang Pho Plalai” – a massive 35 hours of viewing -into a three-hour, 15 minute musical was a hard, if not improbable, task for playwright Suphawat Hongsa, whose much smaller scale “Monrak Transistor” was awarded best musical and best book two years ago.

He indeed deserved credit for the fine balance between comedy and drama. However, he was unable to cram the complicated lives of the three male and four female lead characters, not to mention their games, into his musical book and as a result many turning points looked and sounded implausible. And he also had to contend with the sidekick characters who needed stage time too.

Director Sudarat Sisurakarn was working on a production of this scale for the first time and while this story was clearly told, most of her performers were over the top. A notable exception was Satta Sattathip, who knew the difference between stage presence and overacting from his experience in theatre before becoming a household name for his TV work.

As four college friends, only one of whom had managed to get married, professional crooners Katreeya English, Pijika Jittaputta, Puttatida Sirachayawere and Nalin Petchin, who was also music director and singing coach for this production, formed a musical delight. However, I found myself wishing that their acting skills had been better honed and less presentational. The cast also comprised leading actress from “Miss Saigon”, “Cixi Taihou” and “The Wife” Kanda Witthayanuparpyuenyong in a lesser, yet pivotal, role, plus vocalist Viyada Komarakul Na Nakorn in another supporting role. In other words, there were so many singing divas in this show that the focus was on the female characters, and “Gang Pho Plalai” was fittingly dropped from the title.

Of the male members of the gang -Chartayodom Hiranyatithi, Arnuttaphol Sirichomsaeng and Kemawat Rerngtham – only Arnuttaphol could match both the acting and singing prowess of his partner Pijika and while Chartayodom was believable as his character, Kemawat just didn’t have that “plalai” (womanising) quality.

In terms of set, it was clear that the production design had been created only for the 10-performance run. The set sometimes didn’t fit the last proscenium and the costumes couldn’t quite differentiate between characters, though they did make the actors look good.

To fully understand the whole story, one needs to watch the original TV series. The songs and music simply couldn’t make up for the lack of time to develop the plot.