A Midsummer Night's Dream
Dionysus Contemporary Theatre/ Huayi 2017
Esplanade Theatre Last Saturday
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that tackles some rather weighty themes, including the nature of reality and illusion, and the arbitrariness of attraction.
But it does so with a light touch and a cloak of fantasy and comedy. However one chooses to interpret the play, it is one trippy adventure.
Director Olivia Yan of Hong Kong’s Dionysus Contemporary Theatre taps into that playful, surreal essence for this adaptation.
Story-wise, she sticks quite closely to the Bard’s version.
The Fairy King Oberon (Anthony Wong) and Queen Titania (Candice Yu) are squabbling over who should have a young boy.
In a fit of pique, he casts a spell on her that leads her to fall head over heels for the first creature she sees on waking up.
That turns out to be Bottom (Franky Mcnugget), an actor who has been stuck with the head of a donkey.
The mischievous sprite Puck (Huen Tin Yeung) uses the same potion to meddle in the affairs of four young lovers: Lysander (Alex Lam) and Hermia (Kate Yeung), who long to be together against her father’s wishes; and Demetrius (Angus Chan), who wants to marry Hermia; and Helena (Rosa Maria Velasco), who is besotted with Demetrius.
The use of Cantonese dialogue, while generally retaining the English names, immediately gives the production an exotic feel.
The lines switch between formal and colloquial Cantonese, so it feels both comfortingly familiar and detached at different times.
In one memorable scene, Helena and Hermia descend into a catfight in which they hurl insults about each other’s bust size and it plays out like an exaggerated Hong Kong comedy film.
The stage is kept uncluttered, with a few pieces of props, such as a large rock and a ramp, to delineate the space. It means the costumes, lighting and sound are key to transporting one to a realm of magic and fantasy.
Costume designer Tsang Man Tung must have had a field day coming up with the diverse looks, from neon-coloured-circus-acrobat Puck to the skivvies the four lovers run about in to the regally ostentatious raiments of Oberon and Titania.
Wong is feathered and cocky as the Fairy King while Yu has an imperious presence as the Queen and also as Hippolyta, who is marrying Duke Theseus (also played by Wong) in yet another strand of the tale.
Kudos to Huen for a lithe and limber performance and to Mcnugget for a fearless one, wearing a pair of underpants with an obscenely large bulge as the transformed Bottom.
But it is Velasco who leaves the deepest impression as she makes one really feel the desperation of Helena’s situation.
Her Helena is funny and sympathetic instead of merely being an object of ridicule or pity.
In a story filled with fairies, magic and outsized drama, she keeps things real.
(ST)

Farewell, 2016, year of loss and upheavals.
Who knows what 2017 will bring, but to start things on a bright note, there are several events I look forward to on the music front, from album releases to a living legend’s new musical.
Hong Kong’s Eason Chan is a great singer in top form and he has released at least one album or EP a year since 2005. He is adventurous when it comes to his music outings – from his collaboration with Singapore singer-songwriter JJ Lin for Mandarin album Rice & Shine (2014) to a trio of edgy Cantonese EPs released in 2010 and 2011.
Last year was an exception as he did not drop a new disc. There are rumours that he has been working on new material in the recording studio and that the album will be followed by a world tour. Hopefully, this is not just wishful thinking of fans hankering after a record from him.
Here’s also hoping that his new gig as a mentor on TV show Sing! China will not suck up too much of his time – as entertaining as his comments on the show could be given his shoot-from-the-hip tendencies, they’d be mere distractions to the kind of music he can produce.
It so happens that Taiwanese dancing diva Jolin Tsai sat out last year as well, after releasing Myself in 2010, Muse in 2012 and Play in 2014. (Did she get the same memo as Chan?)
She has been having fun playing around with Mando-dance-pop, stretching the genre and proving it can be more than throwaway fluff. In the process, The Great Artist from Muse was named Best Song of the Year at the Golden Melody Awards in 2013 and Play won Best Mandarin Album at the same event a year later.
At a concert in China last month, she promised to release a new album this year. The question is whether she will continue in the same musical vein or whether her break-up with model Vivian Dawson after six years will make its way into the music.
If Myself was any indication, Tsai seems unlikely to be baring her soul on disc. Maybe she will just dance away her troubles.
What is bound to be far more personal is 50 Song Memoir from American indie pop group The Magnetic Fields, due out on March 3. The concept here is an autobiographical album with one track for each year of frontman and songwriter Stephin Merritt’s life.
The band had previously struck gold with another concept record 69 Love Songs (1999). In one song, he memorably described his heart as “running ’round like a chicken with its head cut off” and on the album, he explored a diverse array of genres from country to jazz to synth pop.
Other idiosyncratic projects of his have included i (2004) – every song title begins with the letter I – and the contrasting pair of albums, noise pop on Distortion (2008), followed by the acoustic folk of Realism (2010).
In each case, Merritt’s droll lyrics and musical versatility made for a winning combination.
When it comes to penning words set to music, theatre giant Stephen Sondheim is in a class of his own. Producer Cameron Mackintosh once hailed him as “possibly the greatest lyricist ever”. From dissecting relationships in Company (1970) in contemporary New York to limning a murderous barber in Sweeney Todd (1979) in Victorian-era London, Sondheim has vividly brought to life diverse worlds and the spectrum of human experience.
Remarkably, he continues to be active at the age of 86 and there is the wonderful prospect of a new musical from him, eight years after Road Show – about a pair of brothers in the freewheeling, get-rich-quick America of the early 1900s – made its off-Broadway premiere.
The new work, tentatively titled Bunuel, is a collaboration with playwright David Ives (All In The Timing, 1993) and could possibly be staged this year. It is inspired by two films by Spanish director Luis Bunuel – The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Exterminating Angel (1962), both involving surreal dinner parties. It sounds deliciously intriguing.
If this list does not excite you, no matter. Do the same exercise yourself and jot down the things that you are looking forward to. Before you know it, the year is already looking up.
(ST)

Emily The Musical
Musical Theatre Ltd
School of the Arts Studio Theatre/ Last Friday
Stella Kon’s Emily Of Emerald Hill is an enduring dramatic work that has been repeatedly staged since 1984, with performers such as Leow Puay Tin, Margaret Chan and Ivan Heng stepping into her beaded slippers.
While they have shown theatregoers different sides to the Peranakan matriarch – imperious, maternal, vulnerable – she has always remained compelling.
In the latest re-imagining of the monodrama as a musical, theatregoers got one that seemed somehow diminished.
Partly, it was a consequence of the production expanding the story. Previously, it was just Emily alone, dominating the stage and the story of her transformation from naive 14-year-old bride to iron-willed woman of the house.
With a full-fledged cast of actors now parading across the simple stage depicting the interior of the house on Emerald Hill, that feeling of conspiratorial intimacy with Emily was lost. It also did not help that she was played by three actresses at different stages in her life: Melissa Wei-En Hecker in her youth, April Kong in her prime and Karen Lim in her old age.
In the programme, Kon, who wrote the book and lyrics for the musical, says she was curious about the other characters. But it turns out that they were not very interesting.
Theatregoers got to see Kheong (Ian Chionh), Emily’s husband, in the flesh, but learnt precious little about him. And then in a rather jarring moment, he was suddenly gushing about another woman in song.
Mei Choon (Jasmine Blundell), girlfriend of Emily’s grandson, was essentially a sounding board for the older Emily. Unfortunately, she was prone to inane comments and the romance between her and the grandson was a yawn.
The dialogue tended to be clunky, which was also a problem for the lyrics. While there was a welcome attempt to insert some Peranakan patois into the songs, the lyrics were often too plain and lacking in wit and surprise.
The songs were not helped by the singers going off-key (or else there were some odd modulations going on in composer Desmond Moey’s score).
Some of director Sonny Lim’s staging decisions seemed a little strange, including an awkward ballad between a young Emily and her father which featured an inordinate amount of hand-holding between the two.
In the end, it seemed that the too-neat lesson Emily had to learn was this: If you love somebody, set him free, a point hammered home in a repeated anecdote about holding a bird in one’s hand.
The re-imagining might not be a triumph, but if there is anything theatregoers have learnt about Emily, it is that she has an indomitable spirit. She will be back, in one form or another.
(ST)

The Noose & Kakis... 11 Months Of Fresh Air!
Mediacorp VizPro International and Channel 5
The Theatre @ Mediacorp
On television, The Noose’s irreverent take on current affairs in a riot of exaggerated accents has been winning fans since 2007. Its jump to the stage is a mixed bag of laughs as well as skits that fail to hit the mark.
Perhaps the bigger problem is the production’s structure. In between skits featuring familiar characters from The Noose, six stand-up comedians from Singapore and Malaysia – the titular kakis, which is local slang for friends – helm teaser sets.
They make fun of Malaysian politics, send up racial stereotypes and take potshots at Caucasians.
Which is all well and good, in particular Kumar’s abrasive and funny take on living in an HDB flat, except there is little thematic continuity between The Noose skits and the short sets.
If, as comic Rishi Budhrani says, the point of the sets is to give the cast time to change their costumes, there is actually a better solution in plain sight: Video clips are already being used, so why not simply extend them? These new clips by The Noose cast, which continue into action that unfolds on stage, work better.
As for the main show on stage, Michelle Chong is conspicuous by her absence given that her characters – from Filipina domestic helper Leticia Bongnino to Chinese KTV hostess Lulu – were among the breakout stars of the TV show.
Still, the hardworking quartet of Chua Enlai (news anchor B.B. See, minister Wan Mo Peh), Suhaimi Yusof (field reporter Jojo Joget), Judee Tan (North Korean correspondent Kim Bong Cha, Hong Kong correspondent Rose Pork) and Alaric Tay (Chinese news anchor Xin Hua Hua) give it a good shot.
Chua, in particular, is a hoot as Thai correspondent Pornsak Sukhumvit as he investigates the impact of ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Grab. It tends to be funny when things get a little naughty and Pornsak, who is also a pole-dancing instructor, lets it rip with double entendres.
He also takes a dig at scandal-hit former MP David Ong, as does Kumar during his set.
Other topical issues the show tackles include the haze (Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla had chided neighbouring countries for not thanking them for providing 11 months of “nice air”), the City Harvest Church misuse-of-funds case and MRT train breakdowns.
But with the recent accident near a train station that claimed two lives still on our minds, a sketch about repair works taking place on the tracks cuts a little close to the bone. Perhaps it was too late for a major rewrite.
Tan, who also directs the show, acknowledges the tragedy and conveys her condolences, ending the three-hour show on an unexpectedly sombre note.
(ST)

A performer who can act, sing and dance well is admiringly referred to as a triple threat. When the acting, singing and dancing come together in a well-executed piece of musical theatre, the result is a triple treat for audiences.
What works on stage, though, does not necessarily translate to the big screen. Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables (2012) divided opinions, while Rob Marshall’s Chicago (2002) was less satisfying than the Broadway revival production of 1996. And word on Clint Eastwood’s Jersey Boys, opening here on Thursday, has been middling.
Often, the problem occurs as a result of casting. Instead of the triple-threat requirements, it is a fourth quality – Hollywood star power – that trumps the other three.
But the thing is, a case of two out of three will not do when it comes to a musical. In John Kander and Fred Ebb’s jazzy Chicago, first produced on Broadway in 1975, there is acting, singing and dancing to legendary choreographer Bob Fosse’s slinky moves. And there is no way you can shimmy your way through that with two left feet.
More often, though, it is on the singing front that actors fall flat.
Set against the backdrop of seething political discontent in France in the early 1800s, the musical Les Miserables is based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel of the same name and follows the travails of escaped convict Jean Valjean.
On stage, the part of single-minded inspector Javert has been played by theatre actors such as Roger Allam, Terrence Mann and Philip Quast. The role calls for a rich and authoritative baritone and the Australian Quast was regarded as a strong contender for the title of Javert, even taking on the role at the 10th Anniversary Concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1995.
In other words, these were some mighty impressive shoes to fill.
But the big-screen casting of Russell Crowe was a major misstep.
Crowe might have an Oscar for Best Actor under his belt for the historical epic Gladiator (2000), but he simply cannot sing. It sounded as though he had either swallowed a frog or was trying to spit one out. What should have been powerful scenes as Javert swore to hunt down Valjean and later wrestled with his faith caused an outbreak of sniggering instead.
Things improved when it came to getting the right Valjean. The protagonist has been played, arguably most definitively, by Irish tenor Colm Wilkinson. He originated the role in London in 1985 and continued to play him when the musical transferred to Broadway in 1987.
Hugh Jackman took on the role in the film and it was a smart choice as he is one of the rarest of the rare – a triple threat with mainstream star power. When not slicing and dicing baddies as Wolverine, Jackman has done award-winning work on stage. His turn in Oklahoma! in 1998 earned him an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical, while playing singer-songwriter Peter Allen won him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 2004 for The Boy From Oz.
One inherent disadvantage of the film medium is that you lose the sense of immediacy you get from watching a theatre production.
But let’s be honest here. Whether out of budgetary constraints or due to leave-it-to-the-last- minute impulse, it is all too easy to end up in the cheap seats in the second circle where you have to squint away at the action on stage.
So Hooper’s loving close-ups in Les Miserables meant you could see the actors emoting at close range without having to shell out hundreds of dollars for top-tier seats. There is something to be said for the egalitarianism of cinema.
All that emotional bombast was too much for some to take. But given Les Miserables’ epic and sprawling story, themes of love, revolution and sacrifice, and scenes of youthful passions boiling over, Hooper’s approach and treatment were a good fit.
Another stage-to-screen musical marred by casting choices was Chicago.
In the 1997 Broadway revival of the cynical musical about crime and celebrity, James Naughton won a Tony Award for his portrayal of the silvertongued lawyer Billy Flynn. Richard Gere is silver-haired. Close, but no cigar.
Also, there was a physical mismatch between the statuesque-looking Catherine Zeta-Jones and the smaller-sized Renee Zellweger. It meant the impact of numbers such as Hot Honey Rag, in which two performers move in perfect coordination and sometimes in unison, was diminished.
Most egregiously though, the wonderfully funny duet Class was dropped from the film.
The music component in a musical is key and messing with it rarely bodes well.
Which brings us to Jersey Boys, which is about the 1960s rock ’n roll group The Four Seasons. While Eastwood has had a life-long love affair with jazz, the film still seems a bit of an odd choice for him to direct. He is better known for gunslinging than anything to do with doo-wop singing.
While some gave the thumbs-up to his take on the musical, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss called it a “turgid botch” and Variety points to the
“relative dearth of prominent musical performances”. The emphasis on the mob links has also led to comparisons with Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990).
One encouraging sign, though: Triple threat John Lloyd Young, who won the Tony Award in 2006 for playing Frankie Valli on Broadway, survived the switch from stage to screen.
It suggests the casting decisions were made without Hollywood star power skewing the equation. Not to make a song and dance of it, however, but that does not mean success is assured. Whether it works as a movie will depend on myriad other factors that sway the fate of every other film.
(ST)

Ah Boys To Men: The Musical
Resorts World Theatre
Last Saturday
With more than $14 million in total box-office takings, Jack Neo’s two- parter Ah Boys To Men was a runaway movie hit that made stars of its fresh-faced ensemble cast.
Wanting to leverage on its success was a no-brainer. The big question was how.
For those who cannot wait until Ah Boys To Frogmen comes along, this musical adaptation should be able to tide you over. But if you are not already a fan, this is unlikely to sway you.
This stage production takes the key plotlines of the national service-themed movies with a script by Goh Boon Teck and adds music numbers by producer- songwriter Don Richmond.
The Ah Boys and Men have largely returned. There is Tosh Zhang as the intimidating but good-hearted Sergeant Ong, Wang Weiliang as the street-smart Hokkien soldier Lobang, Maxi Lim as the eager beaver Aloysius Jin and Noah Yap as the lovelorn IP Man.
Taking over from Joshua Tan in the key role of spoilt brat Ken Chow is actor- singer Benjamin Kheng.
And once again, the recruits will learn to be men as they undergo basic military training.
One major advantage the musical has over the movies is its relative brevity. At 21/2 hours long, it moves at a brisker pace compared with the overlong flicks.
But since it is adapted from the films, some of the problems inherent in the movies remain.
Chow is still an unlikable character who is hard to get behind and his turnabout again hinges on a melodramatic accident. His section-mates are still painted in simplistic strokes and are mostly just cardboard characters. And IP Man’s revenge attack on a straying girlfriend (Patricia Mok trying to act cute) still feels like an overstretch.
This is where the casting is crucial. While Chow’s girlfriend crisis barely registers, Kheng at least casts him in a more sympathetic light whenever he sings with his raspy and resonant voice.
And Wang, who was a breakout star in the movies, proves that his charisma translates from the big screen to the stage. Then again, this should not be surprising given his getai background.
Happily, he gets to do a solo number, Brothers Forever, and his slightly raw rendition of the English and Mandarin number strikes just the right note.
Where the musical deviates most is probably in the inclusion of Filipino maid Leticia – but played by Chua Enlai instead of Michelle Chong, who plays a similar character on the television sketch show The Noose.
Dressed in what looks like an incongruous cosplay waitress costume, Chua milks some laughs with a Filipino accent and some funny lines. This is in keeping with director Beatrice Chia-Richmond’s broad and sometimes exaggerated tone.
As for the songs themselves, Cheong Or Geng was the best of the lot. It manages to incorporate army lingo in a natural way and gives voice to two opposing philosophies: “cheong”, which means to go all out, and “geng”, which means faking it to escape tough activities.
Also hitting the spot was the SOC (Standard Obstacle Course) rap as well as the catchy Recruits’ Anthem, the theme song of the first movie written by Zhang.
The hardest song to sit through was probably the English-and-Mandarin duet Father And Son by Richard Low and Kheng. It is meant to evoke the wide gulf between them but it just comes across as jarring because Low is simply not a natural singer.
As far as military-themed musicals go, the most entertaining is still playwright- songwriter Julian Wong’s Botak Boys. Maybe someone should bring that back for another tour of duty.
(ST)

Glass Anatomy: The Musical
Various artists
Often, soundtrack albums serve as a souvenir of a show one has enjoyed.
This is one of the rare occasions where the record works better than the full-fledged musical, an adaptation of the Taiwanese film Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing? (1983). Glass Anatomy is currently playing at the Esplanade Theatre until Sunday.
For starters, the songs are presented in their entirety, not in snippets. Also, they are not repeated ad nauseam as they were during the show.
Classic numbers such as The Same Moonlight and Please Come With Me are given an orchestral makeover complete with harmonising. Do You Have Any Beer Bottles To Sell starts off mournful and builds to a dramatic outpouring of emotions.
Pop star Della Ding Dang does a decent job taking on numbers first made famous by veteran singer Julie Su Rei. Having the requisite lung power certainly helps.
Also effective is local actress Audrey Luo’s take on the movingly steadfast Holding Hands, a track marred by overuse in the production.
Take the songs here and build your own musical in your head instead.
(ST)

David The Best 2.0 Kucing Kuraps FTW
Drama Box, The Joyden Hall @ Bugis+/Thursday
Overheard near the three-hour mark at this production: “Oh my God, it’s not over yet.” A wildly ambitious piece of community theatre, David The Best tries to explore identity and how its different layers – national, racial and personal – overlap.
Sadly, its execution falls short. What we get is a sprawling, scattered talk show that is crying out to be edited. It is as unwieldy as its title, which references the underdog (David vs Goliath), Internet slang (FTW) and throws in the Malay phrase for “small fry” for good measure. This is the second edition of a well-received play radio DJ Huang Wenhong did in 2008 called David The Best!.
David 2.0 has a loose talk-show format. Guests, from MediaCorp actor Chew Chor Meng to regular folks who responded to an audition call on Huang’s radio show, share their stories on stage. Huang serves as host and also slips in and out of different voices and characters in observational pieces which pad out the show. He co-created the show with Drama Box’s Kok Heng Leun, who directed and wrote the script.
One theme that crops up in the show is this: We all have our stories, and by sharing our stories, we become a stronger and more tolerant community. Alfian Sa’at’s 2011 play, Cooling Off Day, about how people voted in the General Election, had conveyed the same message in far more compelling fashion – and without spelling it out.
The idea is a worthy one, but while I admire the courage of the regular folks who came forward to share their tales, it is theatre’s job to give some shape and form to the stories rather than letting them run on. For example, a mother’s convoluted story about a disciplinary incident involving her son at school did not have enough of a pay-off.
In addition to Chew, the production also featured guest appearances by Taiwanese getai performer Hao Hao and theatre actress Aidli Mosbit. A slightly different roster of guests will appear at each performance. The show’s run is till Oct 20.
On opening night on Thursday, Chew talked about his abusive father and his journey as an actor and his struggle with spinal muscular atrophy, while Hao Hao shared the hurdles he has faced as a cross-dressing performer. Some of it was amusing. Some, touching and moving. But one wonders if this was the right venue for these confessionals.
Sure, Hao Hao makes a point about multiple identities and how they shift, depending on context. But it takes him some time to get to it. Meanwhile, he hijacked the evening to flaunt his flirty, sassy getai persona (above).
Huang bantered quite a bit with Aidli, asking the audience to freely ask her about Malays and Muslims. Mostly, he offered up broad stereotypesfor her to swat away easily. The exchange was done in the spirit of fostering greater understanding and it helped that Aidli had some zinging comebacks.
When Huang riffs on about aspects of Singapore life, the delivery is genial, but the writing is not tight or sharp enough. It is a charge that could be levelled against the production as a whole. Adding FTW – Net lingo for “for the win” – to a title does not automatically make a show awesome.
(ST)

Finishing The Hat

By Stephen Sondheim

American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim is a towering figure in the genre of musical theatre. His body of work is held in such high esteem that a 1994 New York Magazine cover story even asked, “Is Stephen Sondheim God?”

He started out as a lyricist for the hit shows West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) and went on to pen both the music and words for influential works such as Company (1970), which explored modern-day relationships, and Sweeney Todd (1979), whose unlikely protagonist was a murderous barber.

What this volume does is to collect his lyrical output from 1954’s Saturday Night through to 1981’s Merrily We Roll Along. As the subtitle spells it out, the lyrics are presented with “attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines and anecdotes”.

Sondheim has three key principles that he constantly reiterates: God is in the details, less is more and content dictates form.

For example, he points out that in the song Losing My Mind, the line “To think about you” is more effective than “And think about you” as it takes a character deeper into her obsession.

Not that Finishing The Hat is insufferably self-congratulatory. If anything, Sondheim is his own harshest critic and often points out what he considers to be flaws in his work.

He also takes potshots at some unexpected composers and lyricists, including Oscar Hammerstein II. Not only was he one-half of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the team behind South Pacific (1949) and The Sound Of Music (1959), he was also a mentor and surrogate father to Sondheim.

While acknowledging his debt to the man, Sondheim calls him out for redundancy and sometimes getting carried away with pretty images.

There are also juicy bits of trivia and arresting anecdotes scattered throughout the volume from the fact that he has stockpiled a lifetime’s supply of Blackwings pencils and yellow legal pads to Hermione Gingold’s surprising audition for A Little Night Music (1973).

This is essential reading for fans and anyone with an interest in the process of artistic creation. Sondheim’s musicals are, of course, essential for everyone.

If you like this, read: Art Isn’t Easy: The Theater Of Stephen Sondheim by Joanne Gordon. An academic look at Stephen Sondheim’s musicals.

(ST)

Closer

Pangdemonium! Productions

DBS Arts Centre/Last Saturday

It was probably not a coincidence that Closer opened after Valentine’s Day.

It is the antithesis of chocolate- covered kisses and mawkish sentimentality and when you do get a rose, it is a virtual one sent over a sex-chat website.

The play is about four characters in a daisy-chain of hook-ups and break-ups in modern-day London.

Writer Dan (Keagan Kang) and stripper Alice (Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie) are brought together when she gets knocked down in a traffic accident.

He later meets photographer Anna (Tan Kheng Hua) and there is an immediate attraction between the two.

Unwittingly, he helps to set her up with dermatologist Larry (Adrian Pang) whom he randomly encounters, and plays a trick on, on the website London F***s.

There is an affair, there are lies, break-ups and recriminations and that takes one up only to intermission.

Patrick Marber’s script demands a lot from actors because of the emotional roller-coaster ride they have to go through and also because the plot developments are barely plausible.

Larry is perhaps the easiest one to get a handle on and Pang plays him with a smooth mix of light charm and dark vengefulness.

Like a pendulum that swings back and forth, Dan is swayed this way and that between the two women and you never feel that you come to grips with the character. In part, it is also because Kang and Tan do not fully convince as a couple desperately in love and lust.

Perhaps the least realistic character is Alice the stripper, whose occupation seems to have been chosen mainly so that the audience can watch a pole-dance routine, which, by the way, MacQuarrie pulls off with sensual flair.

While some of Marber’s dialogue can be compelling and funny, it can sometimes feel too self-consciously clever and glib.

One suspects that Closer has been hailed as raw and edgy because there is the thrill of watching actors on stage spew invective and vulgarities at one another.

In the 2004 film adaptation, one even gets to see movie stars Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen get down and dirty.

The shock value starts to wear thin in the second half, and even the stylish direction and versatile set do not mask the fact that the audience is not exactly getting dazzling insights as the characters needle one another about love, betrayal and honesty.

When Alice mocks Dan with an outburst of “Do you have a single original thought in your head?”, it feels, for a fleeting moment, like a statement that is uncomfortably close to the truth.

(ST)

Fried Rice Paradise

Singapore Repertory Theatre

Esplanade Theatre/Sunday

The secret to good fried rice is to make it with day-old cooked rice.

Apparently, this principle applies to musicals as well, though in this case, Fried Rice Paradise is a reworked version of a show that made its debut in 1991.

I had caught that earlier incarnation and the only thing I remember about it then was that it was not particularly memorable.

Good thing then that singer-songwriter Dick Lee, who wrote the book, music and lyrics, has almost completely overhauled the dish.

Only two characters from 1991 made it to this version – Bee Lean (Denise Tan), who makes a shiok fried rice based on her mother’s recipe, and her best friend Girly Danker (Candice de Rozario).

Instead of focusing on a middle-aged Bee Lean, the story is now set in 1979 and is about the young girl and her dreams of finding love and making her mark in the world.

Though she does not realise it, her neighbour and good friend Johan (Taufik Batisah) is mad about her. Instead, she is drawn to Hennessy Goh (Sebastian Tan), the son of nightclub owner Rickson Goh (Darius Tan).

To spice things up, Rickson has plans to redevelop the stretch of shophouses in the Jalan Calamansi area and needs to get Bee Lean’s father Choo Kew Teng (Lim Yu Beng) to sell his properties, by hook or by crook.

Despite the convolutions, the story is not particularly compelling since there is little suspense over how it will all turn out, while the characters come across as blandly generic or outrageously cartoonish.

What keeps this concoction bubbling along instead are the key ingredients of an easy-on- the-ear score, some likeable performances, clever choreography from Jeffrey Tan and a handsome and versatile set designed by Francis O’Connor.

The music spans a gamut of genres effectively, from the retro dance vibe of Disco Boogie Hustle Bump to the bouncy number Turning Twenty-one to the love ballad Stay. However, while a fun song, the appearance of Rasa Sayang, off Lee’s 1989 album The Mad Chinaman, in Act Two feels like an unnecessary diversion.

Meshing better was Denise Tan and her portrayal of the shy and gauche Bee Lean and Sebastian Tan as the louche son who has a change of heart about seducing her for his father’s ends.

In his first theatrical outing, Taufik seemed more comfortable singing than acting and there was a mismatch in the energy level between the two aspects. Also, it was hard to make out the words in his opening number, which was full of exposition to set the scene for the musical.

But in his solo numbers, the Singapore Idol winner was more in his element.

Meanwhile, stealing scenes as his feisty mother was veteran actress Rahimah Rahim while Darius Tan blithely mangled and massacred the English language in a nasally and over-the-top performance that became less funny over the course of the show.

The pacing was rather problematic as well. All that set-up by director Steven Dexter in the more enjoyable first half was followed by a jerky second act that meandered at some points and then felt rushed at others.

So yes, while the new version of Fried Rice is improved, it falls short of musical paradise.

(ST)

White Soliloquy

Toy Factory

Esplanade Theatre Studio

To commemorate its 20th anniversary, Toy Factory has chosen to pay tribute to veteran stage and television actor Bai Yan, now 91 and retired.

At first glance, this seems like a strange choice given that he does not have a particularly strong association with the theatre company. But the playwright, Toy Factory’s artistic director Goh Boon Teck, has used Bai’s lifelong career as an actor to broach broader themes about acting and the state of the performing arts in Singapore.

In contrast to its other current production, the musical December Rains, White Soliloquy – a translation that plays on the Mandarin characters for Bai Yan – is intimate in set-up. The only props on the stage are a large dirty mirror and a few empty wooden chairs, while the weight of the show rests on Nelson Chia (above), the only performer seen on stage.

Yet the scope of what this play tackles is epic. There is the narrative arc of biography, beginning with how China-born Yan Boyuan was mesmerised by the travelling Yin Yue Music And Dance Troupe and then taken in by them after being roped in as a stand-in.

Chia, dressed all in white, is an engaging performer as he tells the tale, alternating between the roles of narrator, Bai and an assortment of other characters ranging from a dedicated fan in Penang speaking Mandarin with a Malaysian accent to a director on the set of a MediaCorp series with a strong Hong Kong accent.

What comes through most strongly is Bai’s unflagging spirit, which is mirrored in Chia’s indefatigable performance. Bai ekes out a living through the years of the Japanese Occupation, loses his savings in an investment after the war and then starts afresh, performing at several venues a night in order to support three families – his own in Singapore as well as his parents and his in-laws in China.

Through it all, he perseveres, holding on to the mantra that a man’s back must shoulder immense burdens before he can soar. The problem, though, is that Bai ends up seeming too saintly to be true.

Goh and director Jalyn Han also weave in vignettes ruminating on various aspects of the actor’s life. It was telling that some of these scenes provoked a bigger reaction from the crowd than when the story was simply about Bai, suggesting the biography portion could have been further tightened.

One such interlude was about a MediaCorp (or perhaps it was TCS then) A-lister, Cao so-and-so, throwing his weight about on set and generally behaving disgracefully. It certainly piqued interests and ears pricked up.

At one point, Chia started reflecting on his own experiences as an actor, adding yet another facet to the piece. What was rather jarring however was the diatribe against clueless bureaucrats and the constant struggle to justify spending on the arts. While the tirade did raise a few laughs, it ultimately felt out of place.

One caveat for those planning to catch the production. It is largely in Mandarin, with snatches of song and dialogue in other provincial dialects, and there are no English surtitles.

If you are caught off-guard, Chia’s musing about whether an actor’s dialogue is all in vain (bai le yan yu) will end up being unintentionally ironic.

(ST)

Chicago The Musical
Lunchbox Theatrical Productions and David Atkins Enterprises with John Frost and Fran and Barry Weissler
Esplanade Theatre, Tuesday

Chicago, together with Cabaret, are the dark glinting jewels in the oeuvre of the legendary partnership between composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb.
The cynical heart of this musical is unveiled right from the start. There is an announcement that we are about to watch a story of murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery – all the things we hold “near and dear” to us.
The setting is the 1920s in the Windy City when jazz was the brassy soundtrack of the times and hot-blooded killers grabbed newspaper headlines.After shooting her lover dead, Roxie Hart (Sharon Millerchip) is bundled off to jail where she plots and schemes to escape from the gallows. Another merry murderess, Velma Kelly (Deone Zanotto), finds that the media spotlight begins to gradually shift from her to Roxie.
The thought struck me when I first saw the revival of Chicago on Broadway that if the musical genre did not exist, it would have to be invented for this show, so perfectly did it justify the coming together of theatre, song and dance.
It is hence, for me, the standard to which all productions of Chicago have to measure up. The 2002 Oscar-winning film adaptation had the audacity to cut the duet Class, among other transgressions, and does not come up to scratch.
This Australian version is essentially the same production as the 1996’s Broadway revival which features sleek choreography by Ann Reinking in the style of famed choreographer Bob Fosse.
The ensemble makes a splashy song-and-dance entrance with Velma singing All That Jazz. Black skin-tight outfits sheathe buff male bodies and lissome female dancers to make up what has to be the sexiest chorus in town.
It is a blistering start to an elegantly and energetically staged show with the cast nailing one number after another.
Millerchip was a standout. She could put on a kittenish purr and turn on the coquettish charm and then sing with wild-eyed abandon of her ambition to be in vaudeville. And the tricky scene of her as a ventriloquist’s dummy to lawyer Billy Flynn’s literal machinations in the courtroom was nicely executed.
As the thwarted Velma, Zanotto made you feel her frustrations though not quite with the vulnerability that Bebe Neuwirth (from the sitcom Frasier) brought to the role, which won her a Tony Award in 1997 for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. It would also have been nice if there had been greater chemistry between Millerchip and Zanotto.
The rest of the cast had their chance to shine in individual numbers. In particular, Colleen Hewett impressed with the saucy and sassy When You’re Good To Mama as the formidable Matron Morton who presides over the women’s jail while Damien Bermingham, who played Roxie’s husband Amos, stole the limelight with Mister Cellophane, a number about being ignored.
When Chicago was first staged on Broadway in 1975, it received a mixed reception from audiences unused to the frequent breaking of the fourth wall and the deeply mocking tone of the musical.
We now live in times when the idea of the celebrity criminal barely raises an eyebrow– they probably have their own TV shows – and we can listen to lines such as “murder is a form of entertainment” without flinching.
There is barely a ripple even when Billy sings in Razzle Dazzle: “What if, in fact, you’re just disgusting?/Razzle dazzle ’em/And they’ll never catch wise!”
A musical that dares to snigger at its audience? Bless Chicago’s deliciously dark and twisted heart.
(ST)

Liao Zhai Rocks!

The Theatre Practice

Drama Centre Theatre

Saturday

For a collection of supernatural stories dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries, The Strange Tales Of Liao Zhai continue to exert a strong stranglehold on the imagination.

There have been adaptations aplenty, ranging from Ching Siu Tung’s classic A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) on film to TVB’s Dark Tales (1996) on the goggle box.

The Theatre Practice has now added a twist to the plot by turning Liao Zhai into a rock musical with original songs by hit-makers composer Eric Ng and lyricist Xiaohan.

Playwright and co-director Wu Xi has also distilled its colourful cast of characters in hundreds of tales into several key archetypes – philandering scholar Sang Xiao (Ric Liu), captivating vixen spirit Ying Ning (Joanna Dong), wandering ghost Feng San Niang (Celine Rosa Tan) and earnest Taoist exorcist Cheng Ban Xian (Project Superstar 2 finalist Sugie).

Sang Xiao falls for Ying Ning but later succumbs to the wily charms of Feng San Niang. When Sang Xiao is cast into the underworld, it is Ying Ning who risks everything to rescue him even as Cheng Ban Xian is hunting her down.

The cast members handled their roles well and Liu and Dong exuded an easy chemistry. He had a deft touch for light-hearted comedy while she held one’s attention as the impish, mischievous and foxy Ying Ning.

Tan got to show off her lovely pipes while Sugie contributed some well-timed comic relief as the bumbling exorcist. Radio 100.3 deejay Huang Wenhong was unrecognisable beneath his make-up and in his imperious get-up as King Yama, lord of hell.

What was commendable about the production was the way the various elements – costumes, set, sound design and lighting – all came together in service to the story. Even little details such as the transformation of Ying Ning’s father (an excellent supporting turn by Chongqing native Xu Bin) into a fox were able to evoke a response from the audience.

As for the all-important music, Ng and Xiaohan’s numbers were by turns energetic and thundering and then melodic and emotive, though it could be difficult to make out the lyrics without the aid of the surtitles.

Highlights included Show Time, which led into an engaging game show-like finale held near the border between hell and the land of the living; and the closing ballad, Embrace.

Alas, certain melodies were overused.

Amphibian, which was written for local singer Tanya Chua by the duo, was given a make-over with new lyrics. It helped audiences familiar with pop music to be instantly drawn into the musical. Unfortunately, it kept cropping up at intervals and it began to seem as though Ng had simply run out of time to write new tunes.

Also, some of the lessons about relationships and loyalty were a tad unconvincing as the musical did not quite hit the mark at some key epiphanic points.

Still, that should not take away from the fact that Liao Zhai Rocks! is an entertaining show that starts off as a light-hearted romp and ends up as a sweet story about true love.

As in the original tales, the humans came off mostly as selfish and weak-willed, while the spirits were the self-sacrificing and loyal ones.

The tales’ continued popularity is due to their continued resonance and author Pu Songling’s satire of human society still has zing and bite today.

(ST)

Re:Kindle Love

Ko-Nen Creative Arts House and The Arts House

The Hall @ The Arts House

It is hard to put one’s finger on exactly what emotion this Mandarin musical fanned the flames of most, but it definitely was not love.

Was it the incredulity one felt when 20something protagonist Feng Qi (Trey Ho) and single mother Ai Ling (Renee Chua) bump into each other and, in the next breath, are crooning a love duet even though she has barely registered his presence?

Or perhaps it was the bewilderment one experienced when Feng Qi buys a bracelet with the words Zai Jian Ai for the one he loves? The show translates the phrase awkwardly as Rekindle Love but the first translation that popped into mind was actually Goodbye Love.

When not engineering convenient run-ins between characters, film-maker Gloria Chee’s script merrily marries old-school melodrama with eyebrow-raising inanities. We get an orphan with a terminal disease, three women entangled with one man and a confrontation at the cemetery that had even the unusually forgiving 60-plus members of the audience tittering.

Add to the mix the heavy-handed direction by Jalyn Han and it is little wonder that the fresh-faced cast, including Ho, Regina Tey as Feng Qi’s good friend Mei Qin and Lee Qian Yu as Ai Ling’s rebellious daughter Ai Ai, never stood much of a chance despite some promising singing.

Given that singer-songwriter Jiu Jian was part of the 1980s xinyao movement and has also penned compositions for the likes of Jacky Cheung, his musical numbers in the show should have been engaging.

Unfortunately, they were not always cogent to the admittedly challenging plot.

The best number was The Seventh Day In The Desert, which was previously recorded by Taiwanese singer Cyndi Chao. But alas, given that most of its lyrics were too location specific to be shoehorned even into this show, we had to be content with just the chorus as Ai Ling mourned her late husband.

This musical purports to be an earnest exploration of love but it falls far short of its lofty intentions.

In the end, it was the English surtitles, with their cavalier attitude towards punctuation, grammar and meaning, which proved to be more entertaining.

(ST)

Victor/Victoria
Zebra Crossing Productions
Esplanade Theatre

The central premise here is designed to make your head spin – a woman acting as a man who acts as a woman. It suggests a playful exploration of gender roles and a tuneful look at the slippery boundary between masculinity and femininity.
So we have Victoria Grant (jazz singer Laura Fygi), a down-and-out English singer in 1930s Paris, transforming into Count Victor Grazinski, female impersonator extraordinaire, at the suggestion of her friend, has-been actor Toddy (Matt Grey).
Things get sticky when Chicago mobster King Marchan (Jake Macapagal) falls for Victor/Victoria. Can King man up to the possibility that he has fallen for another man? Will Victoria reveal her secret and risk throwing away her resurgent career?
Unfortunately, what should have been compelling questions hardly piqued this reviewer’s interest because of major problems with casting. Physically, there was no doubt that Victor(ia) was a woman even when she was dressed in a tuxedo. There was no hint of androgyny in Fygi’s generous figure and, instead of ambiguous layers of gender role-playing, we got a straightforward portrayal of a woman in men’s clothes. It made all the floor-pacing and hand-wringing over her identity seem silly when it was so obvious that there was no Victor.
While her smoky and husky alto have won her fans in the jazz world, it was a stretch for the audience to accept her as a soprano who can hit a G flat and shatter glass. To make matters worse, there was no chemistry between her and Macapagal, who spoke with an odd affectation and sounded like lisping Tweety Bird at times. Almost A Love Song, a duet that is supposed to be moving, barely had any emotional resonance.
It was left to the supporting cast to step up and Nicole Stinton stole the show with her ballsy turn as King’s ditzy moll, Norma Cassidy, especially for the comic number Paris Makes Me Horny. Grey also impressed as the flamboyant and loyal Toddy.
The handsome sets and effective lighting helped convey not just time and place but also mood. The elaborate costumes were a visual treat and in a nifty nod to the theme, there were women in trousers and men in corsets at the nightspot Club Chez Lui.
After a rather sluggish first half, the pace picked up after the intermission. There was a competently staged set piece of slamming doors and intricately timed exits and entrances between two adjoining hotel suites as several characters tried to avoid running into each other. Still, the zip and zing of a perfect execution was not achieved.
The musical ended with an upbeat message of inclusiveness but this reviewer left with his head resolutely unspun, his funny bone tickled only occasionally and his heart largely untouched.
(ST)

Sing Dollar! The Musical Comedy About Money
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)

Own Time Own Target
W!ld Rice
Drama Centre Theatre

The double-bill of Julian Wong’s Botak Boys and Laremy Lee’s Full Tank provided theatregoers with much to cheer about.
The former in particular was the most fun to be had at the theatre since the anything-goes manic ball of energy that was Chestnuts, which was also directed by Jonathan Lim.
Let’s just say that audiences will never think of the term “army camp” in the same way again.
The musical looks at the BMT (basic military training) experience, “the curse of being male in Singapore”, as seen through the eyes of Justin (Terence Tay), who has just returned from England, and his motley bunch of section mates.
Besides coping with national service, Justin also has to deal with relationship problems. And he has a secret.
If his section mates seem surprisingly supportive when the cat is out of the bag, well, we are in the realm of the musical genre. Here, characters break into song and dance faster than a sergeant can yell, “Knock it down!”, and idealism triumphs over realism.
Playwright Wong also wrote the hummable melodies and clever lyrics. Sample dialogue: “Will we be punished for wet dreams?” Snappy reply: “As long as you keep it dry.”
Watching it, you get the same frisson of electricity you felt when you caught Beauty World for the first time and thought that was a musical that we could truly and proudly call our own.
Full Tank was more laboured and felt more scattered.
Sergeant Leroy (Rodney Oliveiro) has commandeered a tank and gone missing with his men. In a parallel plot, a terrorist has escaped, sending the authorities into a tizzy.
How the two plots meet, against the backdrop of an imaginative set which used jerry cans and ammunition containers as building blocks, is not particularly unexpected.
But Lee had something more in mind than milking yuks from inefficient bureaucracy.
There was a pointed comment about the collusion between politics and media when the Minister for Internal Security (Brendon Fernandez) threatened a TV reporter (Tay) for making him look bad. But it struck a jarring note because of the generally light- hearted tone of the piece.
The cast, which took on roles in both plays, was excellent.
Oliveiro brought heart to the obscenity-spewing, tightly wound Leroy and in Boys as Justin’s sergeant, he uttered colourful Hokkien exclamations with relish.
Nelson Chia’s roles in the course of the evening included a golf-loving, responsibility-shirking general, an elderly petrol pump attendant and a soft- spoken instructor who turned into Mr Nasty. He made each character stick.
Hang Qian Chou stole scenes in Boys as an excitable recruit who has a habit of flailing his arms about when he spoke.
Tay had one of the more difficult tasks as Justin could be rather whiny and emotional. It was good that he has a lovely singing voice which helped the audience to sympathise with the character.
It has been more than 20 years since Michael Chiang’s landmark play, Army Daze, was first staged in 1987 and it is high time other playwrights tackle this crucial period in many men’s lives.
Botak Boys and Full Tank present different facets of that experience and it is especially heartening that Wong and Lee are first-time playwrights.
There is promise of greater things to come from them and that is the cheeriest thought of all.
(ST)

Mark Lee Rally 2009
Drama Centre Theatre
Thursday

You wonder what it would have been like to be in the shoes of Mark Lee’s wife Catherine as she watched the performance.
The undoubted highlight of the 100-minute stand-up show was when the comedian regaled the audience with the long and torturous odyssey the couple underwent in their attempts to have a child.
After several years of trying, he got advice from friends who were proud fathers of broods of tykes.
One proposed that he lift his wife’s legs up after sex, another advocated flipping the legs over the head using the wall as a support, and yet a third advocated an alternative position.
The 40-year-old’s delivery was well-paced and he punctuated his storytelling with generous gesturing.
The segment played to his strengths as a comedian and the fact that the material was personal helped to create a strong connection with the audience.
He knew it was the best part of the show, which was why he saved it for last. It earned the biggest laughs of the night.
That sketch was also the best answer to the prickly question that he himself had asked in an earlier interview with Life!: Why pay to watch him when viewers can see him for free on TV?
It was an opportunity to witness him sharing his private life in a cheekily entertaining manner.
Alas, the rest of the evening was fairly ho-hum.
As promised, he took on government policies on issues ranging from language education to the certificate of entitlement for cars. However, the writing by stage and TV writers Soo Wei Seng and Boris Boo was not particularly sharp.
One could also have done without the constant reference to the political Lees and a lame attempt to milk some laughs by calling himself Performer Mark Lee or PM Lee.
He fared better when riffing on Ah Beng culture and how that is different from the way gangsters behave, including an amusing bit on swearing with hand gestures.
Drawing on recent headline-grabbers, he also took some barbed digs at veteran show host Marcus Chin’s tabloid-worthy relationship with his much younger female assistant as well as the recent brouhaha over lip-synching in The Little Nyonya musical.
The show marks Lee’s 20th year in showbusiness and serves as a reminder of how far he has come with his Ah Beng persona. But it will not have new fans rallying around him.
(ST)

If There're Seasons...
The Theatre Practice
Drama Centre
Last Saturday


One of the early xinyao tracks written by Liang Wern Fook asked the question: “Where Are Our Songs?” Happily, one need not ask that of the composer whose name is synonymous with the Singapore folk music movement which took root in schools here in the 1980s.
Hong Kong playwright Raymond To has stitched together a musical tale based on Liang’s songs and the result, If There’re Seasons, was a 19-show sell-out hit when first staged by The Theatre Practice in 2007.
The restaging of the three-hour musical follows a young Singaporean A-Le (George Chan) as he leaves for America after the death of his girlfriend Xiao Jing (Sing Chew Sin Huey).
There, he meets his fellow countrymen chasing after dreams of their own. There is A-Qiang (Jeffrey Low), also a budding musician, and Rose (Joanna Dong), an aspiring actress whom A-Le is attracted to.
A recent point of reference would be Mamma Mia!, which is built around existing pop hits by Abba. The challenge is to weave together a coherent work from songs which were not specifically written to be parts of a whole. Not surprisingly, the plot can sometimes feel like a mere ploy to shoehorn as many songs as possible into the proceedings.
While Mamma Mia! has laboured multiple storylines, it does preserve the giddy joy of the Swedish group’s infectious music.
Raymond To had a more difficult task with Liang’s works, which have diverse themes, including those of school life, friendship, love, growing up and Singaporean identity. To his credit, he did not take the obvious route – portray school friends who embark on different paths after graduation.
But the end result did not always work and was head-scratchingly baffling at points.
The love triangle with A-Le, Xiao Jing and Rose was never very convincing. It was hard to understand why A-Le was so conflicted over his affections for Rose and it was hard to accept that the sassy modern miss Rose would fall for the indecisive and reserved A-Le.
Setting the action in New York for the large part was also a strange choice which made the songs about identity seem more removed, despite the notion of homesickness being added to the mix.
It certainly did not help that the production’s risible idea of SoHo was Rent’s lower east side by way of Miss Saigon, a lawless neighbourhood thronging with street musicians and Asians.
With the exception of this glaring mis-step, some thought and money had clearly gone into the effective, handsome set.
More importantly, given that this was a musical, the saving grace was that the key leads were competent singers.
Dancer-actor Chan had a bright, pleasant tenor that was a good fit for the xinyao vibe, though too often in solos, he would lapse into the same stance – body facing the audience, head tilted upwards.
Singer-actress Dong handled the part of Rose well, and even turned her into the most sympathetic character as she juggled love and career.
Project Superstar alumnus Sing Chew seemed to be nursing a sore throat and had some trouble with the high notes. Unfortunately for her, she was also stuck with the ghost plot device which quickly became cloying.
Low as A-Qiang could belt it out and he would sometimes slip into exaggeration, but it worked when his intensity matched the lyrics on the track In The End.
A-Qiang’s strained relationship with his boyfriend, which earned the show an advisory for mature content, gave a gender twist to xinyao classics such as As The Night Falls Gently.
For fans familiar with Liang’s works, such moments of genuine surprise were, alas, few and far in between.
An early ensemble number, One Step At A Time, was nicely executed and included a well-choreographed sequence with pizza boxes.
When A-Le sings A Break From Love to a drunk and tormented A-Qiang, it was the perfect choice of song with its lyrics of drowning one’s sorrows in drink.
While the idea of putting together a musical using Liang’s songs is an excellent one, you cannot help but feel that his thoughtful, poetic and incisive works deserve a better vehicle.
(ST)