Arts preview: A Beautiful Day

American playwright Thornton Wilder's 1938 play Our Town - a minimalist drama that deals with the themes of daily life, love, marriage and death - seems an odd choice for a musical adaptation, but local composer Cynthia Wong Chi-wing believes the art form will make the piece more emotionally powerful.

"I've seen various adaptations before, and I'm always touched by a story that inspires us to reflect on life and death," she says. "When it's turned into a musical that impact is intensified. Ideas that are mentioned briefly in the play become a lot more dramatic when we build them up into a solo or a number. Music has this special ability to engage and influence."

While staying faithful to the original play's central themes, A Beautiful Day, the retitled Cantonese adaptation from Actors' Family, has shifted the action from a fictional town in New Hampshire in the early 20th century to a fictitious village in Sha Tin in the 1950s. Another change sees the mothers of the two protagonists - George (Jordan Cheng Kwan-chi) and Emily (Margaret Cheung Kwok-wing) - go from singing in a church choir to practising Cantonese opera in the village commune house. The two lovers tie the knot at a traditional Chinese wedding.

Wong says most of the play may seem ordinary and mundane but that is to contrast with the powerful final act.