Dream Academy
Esplanade Theatre
Sunday
The topic of dollars and sense is a rich one to mine.
From the succinctly titled Money in Cabaret to the high-kicking exuberance of 42nd Street’s We’re In The Money, pecuniary concerns have made their presence felt in musicals.
With the financial crisis upon us, albeit one mysteriously not reflected in the property market, there is no better time to cash in on money woes. Make a song and dance of the whole sorry business and have a good laugh in the face of adversity.
At least, that seems to be the rational for this new musical from the folks behind the popular Dim Sum Dollies offerings.
But like the awkward pun in the title, Sing Dollar! never quite delivers the goods.
The plot centres on a black trash bag containing $500,000 accidentally discovered by a motley bunch of characters in a hotel room in Geylang.
The operative phrase here being “motley bunch of characters”. There is a China prostitute (Emma Yong), a Bangladeshi worker (Kumar), a Filipino maid-masseuse (Pam Oei), a Malay cleaning lady (Najip Ali), a Tiger beer promoter (Selena Tan) as well as a gambler widower (Lim Kay Siu) and his two sons (Sebastian Tan and Hossan Leong).
There is not enough time to develop all the characters with such a large cast and it becomes hard to care what happens to them or who gets the money in the end.
In place of actual characterisation, co-directors Zahim Albakri and Selena Tan both play into and send up the various national and racial stereotypes. Sometimes, they end up producing caricatures which border on the offensive, such as the money-obsessed China hooker.
Given that this is a musical, the more pressing problem is that the tunes by Elaine Chan and the lyrics by Selena Tan are not particularly memorable.
One would be hard-pressed to hum something from the show which even dipped into tunelessness for some worrying stretches.
Bland couplets such as “You know everything’s not okay/When everyone’s running away” do nothing to lift the score while the beer auntie sounds out of character when she sings that “the money I make is so minimal”.
That is not to say that Sing Dollar! is without value.
The hardworking cast juggle multiple roles and make the most of the thinly written characters’ turn in the spotlight on the effective split-level stage.
Najip’s makcik cleaner got to shine in Keeping It Clean, a number that started off seemingly unnecessary and then blossomed as a bevy of tudung-wearing women mopped, wiped and twirled.
The brash beer auntie’s personality was as loud as her tiger-striped outfit and Tan delivered her lines with well-timed zing.
Kumar played against type by not appearing in drag for his main character but his trademark biting sense of humour survived intact. You wish he did not feel the need to shout into the mike though.
The character Soon Huat was an annoyingly whiny retrenched banker whom Leong redeemed with a smooth routine in White Collar Criminal, a Michael Jackson homage.
The gallery of rogues shimmying away on stage included former National Kidney Foundation chief executive officer T.T. Durai and abbot Ming Yi, currently on trial for financial impropriety.
It was an inspired moment you wish the show had more of. For the most part, it was not madcap or zany enough to justify that exclamation point.
So Sing Dollar! offers some small, scattered pleasures for your buck, but it is by no means the gold standard for local theatre.
(ST)