It begins, unexpectedly, with a laugh. “I actually think it’s one of his most well-crafted plays,” says Dato’ Zahim Albakri, the director of ENTOURAGE – Murder Amongst Friends, and one of the late Jit Murad’s closest collaborators. “Some of the writing is his best and really quite fabulous. It’s different from his other plays, but it’s definitely him; you recognise the writing.” Then, almost in the same breath, he admits: “But I also get quite emotional during rehearsals.”

That emotional charge has been a constant since Dramalab announced that ENTOURAGE — a rediscovered “lost play” written by Jit in 2000 but never staged, would finally premiere as part of JitFest 2025. Running for one week only, from 5 to 11 December 2025 at The Playhouse @ The Campus Ampang Mall, the production marks the first time the public will see this sharp, camp, unsettling, and strangely tender murder mystery unfold onstage.

“Jit completed a draft of ENTOURAGE in 2000, and we held a private reading at my home the following year,” Zahim recalls. “It was never staged then because it dealt with mature and taboo topics, including murder, which would have been controversial. Even today, producing it remains a bold move. That’s why we’re turning to the public for support.”

The support he speaks of refers to Dramalab’s crowdfunding campaign — a public push to raise RM296,000 to fully mount the production. But as rehearsals unfold, it becomes clear that ENTOURAGE demands more than financial backing. It also demands a willingness to confront the excesses, contradictions, and moral blind spots of a Kuala Lumpur many Malaysians still remember vividly.

For actor Ghafir Akbar, who plays lead Ghani, the magnetic, sharp-tongued artist at the centre of the story, the experience has been “sentimental, but not sentimental in the way people think.” He explains: “I got to know Jit when I was quite young, maybe 15 or 16. I was already a fan of his work. To now originate a role in what I assume is his last play, that has sentimental value. But in the rehearsal room, we can’t approach it sentimentally. We treat it as a well-crafted piece of work that we need to bring to life.”

The play, after all, is not merely a nostalgic time capsule of KL in the late ’90s. It is, as Ghafir puts it, “a combination of excitement and danger.” Set against KL’s economic boom, and the simmering chaos of the 1997–98 financial crisis and political turmoil, ENTOURAGE follows Ghani, his former muse Lala (played by Sabrina Hassan), and their eclectic circle of friends through a night out that unravels into accusation, revelation, and murder.

“KL in the late ’90s was full of excitement but also upheaval,” Ghafir says. “These characters enjoy the finer things. They have vices. They revel in the possibilities of the city. There’s danger in having too much. Their lives are intertwined, and when something bad happens, cracks appear. That mirrors Malaysia at the time.”

Those cracks, as Zahim points out, are built into the text. “The more I’ve worked on it, and it has taken a while, more things keep revealing themselves.” The team held a workshop two years ago, a reading earlier this year, and are still discovering details. “Even yesterday,” he laughs, “new connections appeared.”

Some of those discoveries are academic, even playful. Ghafir tells the story of looking up the word “hard-boiled” after Jit used it in dialogue. “I understood it conceptually, but when I looked it up, I realised it’s a phrase used in detective stories. He uses these things without explaining them, if you know, you know. As an actor, that’s a wonderful discovery because it reveals things about the character and the world.”

Others are more bittersweet. Zahim describes finding the beginning of an unfinished play on an old hard drive — a work Jit wrote for Krishen Jit. “Just by accident,” he says. “He wrote it for Krishen, and I passed it to Marion. It’s about teachers trying to perform the history of Malaysia using theatre.” Many of Jit’s drafts, however, never made it. “Unfortunately much of his writing was lost. The early plays were typed on typewriters, the later ones saved on laptops that broke down. Hard drives couldn’t be recovered.”

In this sense, ENTOURAGE is a rescue mission to save Jit’s work. When asked why this play matters now, both cast and director speak of themes that run through all of Jit’s work: chosen family, unresolved tensions, and the difficult ways people love and betray each other. “Chosen family is very strong,” Ghafir notes. Zahim adds: “Fatherhood is a recurring theme in his work: in Gold Rain, Spilled Gravy on Rice…It comes up here too.”

But ENTOURAGE also explores the fragility behind the glitter of ’90s KL. Sabrina, who plays Lala, lights up when she talks about discovering the script. “I bumped into Zahim at a reading and he asked if I wanted to join. I said, ‘Sure!’ And when I read just a snippet, I was back in the ’90s. I knew these people.”

Lala, a party girl trying to transition into a more “responsible” life, carries echoes of many women from that era. “She’s my age,” Sabrina says. “She’s approaching her mid-thirties, and there are pressures to change her ways. She wants to get married, have kids. That struggle is something I can relate to.”

For Sabrina, acting in ENTOURAGE is both challenging and exhilarating. “It’s the premiere of a Jit Murad play. Are you kidding me? It’s a gift. His work is so layered. On the surface, it’s a murder mystery. But as you delve into the characters and relationships, it’s so human.”

She admits that some scenes forced her to confront how she performs herself publicly. “Some things in the play may surprise people who know me,” she says, laughing. “This isn’t a typical role for me. So I try to be responsible; I even talk to my husband and my students so no one is shocked.” But when she steps into Lala, she tries to leave hesitation behind. “As an actor, you try to be as free as possible to do justice to the writing.”

The cast’s chemistry, she says, came from the way Zahim built the room. “We talked constantly about relationships and tensions in each scene. Zahim helped us build the world of the play. He keeps you in check but is gentle and allows you to make your own decisions.”

Ghafir agrees. “Zahim is very visual. He’s sensitive to movement, flow, traffic, and basically, what pictures we’re creating. And he’s sharp in understanding what’s happening. If he doesn’t get something, he’ll ask: Why this line? Why this quote? It reminds us not to get lost in language: the language must be supported by arguments.”

Filming the multimedia sequences that will punctuate the show added another layer. “We shot in the nightclub till 2 a.m.,” Ghafir recalls. “It really helped us embody the characters.”

Rehearsing in a studio-house also transformed the process. “There’s a sense of comfort,” Ghafir says. “We eat dinner together, have snacks. There’s a broken formality because it feels like home.”

These small details, the meals, the laughter, the late-night filming, echo the camaraderie of Jit’s own theatrical circle in the 1990s. Zahim reminisces about how Instant Café Theatre began “plagiarising Monty Python” in its early days. When he came across a Monty Python reference buried in ENTOURAGE, a nod to the “Dead Parrot” sketch, he reminisces: “It took me right back.”

Despite the levity, the team is consistently aware of the play’s darker edge. It has always been a bold piece. “It deals with murder, taboos, moral ambiguity,” Zahim says. “That was hard to stage back then, and in some ways still is.”

Yet the cast approach the material with respect rather than fear. “I’m still going all-in,” Ghafir says. “I’m not thinking about how it might be perceived. My job is to honour what Jit wrote. People have vices. People relate to flaws. People don’t do bad things because they’re malicious: they have reasons. I hope the audience sees that.”

It is the human that remains, even as the play spirals into accusation and violence. Zahim reflects on how Jit refuses to judge his characters, despite their flaws. “He makes them human,” he says. “Always human.”

Sabrina puts it more simply: “We’re not pushing any agenda. We’re showing humans being human.”

And that humanity, with all its glitter, mess, longing, and rot, is what ENTOURAGE thrusts under the spotlight.

Photo Credit: Dramalab

ENTOURAGE – Murder Amongst Friends runs from 5th to 11th December 2025 at The Playhouse @ The Campus Ampang Mall, Jalan Kolam Air Lama, Ukay Heights, Ampang Jaya, Selangor . Tickets are available on www.cloudjoi.com