Broad(way) strokes, opera folks
By Mayo Martin, TODAY | Posted: 13 October 2009 1150 hrs
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Broadway 4 Suakus takes Broadway down from the pedestal a little bit.
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SINGAPORE – Daunted by musicals or operas? Don’t scared, don’t scared.
Theatre company Stages’ new production, “Broadway 4 Suakus” will make you feel like the ground zero for musical theatre in New York is “just around the corner,” said director and Chestnuts creator Jonathan Lim.
The show is done “cosy cabaret”-style and stars Lim, Candice De Rozario, Judee Tan and Dwayne Lau, with piano accompaniment by young playwright Julian Wong.
It features four unlikely characters – including a “Ris Low type” and a reformed loanshark – who have discovered the beauty of musicals but are “suddenly faced with 20 of the dirtiest songs in Broadway”.
The selection is a crash course on musicals, which range from recent popular ones all the way back to 1928, with the song “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love” from Cole Porter’s Paris.
There’s even a “prostitution medley” that strings together songs from “Les Miserables”, “Miss Saigon”, “Avenue Q” and another old Porter work, “The New Yorkers”.
It’s a way of taking Broadway “down from the pedestal a little bit,” said Lim, 36, who remembers being a musical “soundtrack junkie”, and has been known to occasionally watch eight to nine musicals a week – when he happens to be in the Big Apple.
Meanwhile, new company OperaViva will be defamiliarising your operatic experience, by staging one inside the Sri Mariamman Temple.
“Kannagi, The Story Of The Jewelled Anklet”, is an adaptation of the ancient Tamil epic “Silappadikaram”, about the trials and tribulations of a beautiful woman who later becomes an avenging goddess.
The show, organised by OperaViva and the Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society, is a “global” one, described poet/playwright Robert Yeo, 69, who wrote the libretto.
“The legend is Indian, the composer is American, I’m Singaporean, the singer is Australian and the director is Canadian,” he said.
The author of the famous “Singapore trilogy” of plays has turned to writing for opera “because my theatre career is all but dead – either my plays are no good or people are still scared of my political content,” he said, adding, “opera is probably the next mountain to conquer”.
The last play he staged was “Your Bed Is Your Coffin” by NUS Theatre Studies students in the mid-1990s.
The co-founder of OperaViva said that “Kannagi” will be his “test balloon”.
Next year, the company will be staging an original opera, “Fences”, which he wrote with creative partner and another company co-founder, composer John Sharpley.
That, however, will be held in a more conventional venue – Victoria Theatre.
“Broadway 4 Suakus” runs from October 15 to 25 at The Hall, The Arts House. For ticketing details, log on to www.theartshouse.com.sg. “Kannagi” is on October 25 at the Wedding Hall, Sri Mariamman Temple. For the S$100 donation tickets, contact Doreen Tan at 6323 3790.
- TODAY/ar
Here’s the link!
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/entertainmentfeatures/view/1010988/1/.html
