Local Musical Theatre News

Sunday, 7 February, 2010 - Leave a Response

I would ideally like to start another blog chronicling any news related to musical theatre in Singapore, but I realise I’m too lazy to maintain more than one blog.

Anyway, some pieces of musical theatre news that I read about recently:

1) Zebra Crossing and its $1 million loss (here)

Quite sad to hear that the company which produced “Victor/Victoria” last November at the Esplanade Theatre has incurred a $1 million(!) debt as a result of the production.

The Straits Times deems it as a “flopped staging”.

That is scary.

I really wanted to go for it last November, but due to a series of unforeseen circumstances I ended up missing it.

Some of my friends who went for it said it was “so-so”.

From reading the official programme of the show, and seeing the number of people involved, I could tell that it was a massive production.

They even brought in Laura Fygi (here) as the main star.

Question: Were ticket sales that bad that the company had to incur a $1 million debt?

2) Dick Lee’s “Fried Rice Paradise” to be restaged in August 2010 (here)

Dick Lee’s classic musical “Fried Rice Paradise” will be restaged at the Esplanade Theatre from Aug 20 this year, to commemorate the 50th year of the People’s Association.

According to the article, the musical “will be restaged with a brand-new story and songs”.

Taufik will be the main star of the musical.

To quote from the article (here):

“A commissioned production from the Singapore Repertory Theatre, where Lee is associate artistic director, the reworked show is set in the 1970s and promises ‘elements of early Singapore nostalgia, racial harmony, friendship, neighbourliness, romance, and thrilling drama with several twists’, according to a press statement from the PA.”

I think it will be a pretty big production, because they probably will have quite a big budget to work with.

Question: If the musical will have “a brand-new story and songs”, we might as well call it a brand new musical right?

3) “Re:Kindle Love” (here)

There is a Chinese musical that is currently running at the Arts House until Feb 14 which caught my attention because it’s marketed as the “first ever Mandarin Dinner-Musical experience in Singapore”.

To quote the official blurb (here):

“Re:Kindle Love «再 见 爱 » is a tale about promised love that is destroyed under devastating circumstances. The story revolves around a young man and the various complexities which he faces with three women from different generations. It celebrates the optimism and hope that springs from true love, which is shared by a courageous man with those whom he loves during the journey of his life. But most of all, Re:Kindle Love «再 见 爱 » reminds us to cherish our present and our lives and to stay positive no matter how tough the going gets.

The special moments and songs that we have created for Re:Kindle Love «再 见 爱 » will warm each and every heart this coming 2010 Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day!”

I would have liked to attend the musical, just to see what it’s all about, but the ticket prices kinda put me off.

Question: Would anyone pay $150 per person and $250 per couple for this dinner-musical?

Categorized in Arts, Musicals, News, Singapore and Theatre

Should Be A Good Year Ahead

Friday, 5 February, 2010 - 2 Responses

This year has been coming along great, especially in these last two weeks.

It has been an eventful last two weeks, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Was fortunate enough to be able to do quite a bit of networking, and made a number of new friends and contacts in the last two weeks, in various areas.

Managed to speak to a lot of new people, and managed to get some really interesting initiatives kickstarted after those meetings, and I’m really excited about what the rest of the year brings…both for Songcraft as well as for my own personal projects.

It’s going to be an exciting 2010 for sure.

Most importantly, I recently found a librettist that I could potentially work with to create a little musical by this year, hopefully.

Everything’s still in the early stages, and nothing’s really confirmed, but things are looking good.

And we’re both serious about getting something done and putting it up.

It’s just the most amazing thing, cos I’ve been secretly dreaming of getting in touch with a good librettist that I could potentially work with (and who would want to work with me)…and I finally found one!

Thank God for such wonderful stuff.

Sometimes all you need to do is to approach the right people and open your mouth to ask for help, and I’m very fortunate to be able to have known some really helpful and well-connected people who kindly managed to get me hooked up with this librettist.

And very recently this week I did what I’d always been longing to do – meeting this potential librettist at a coffee joint and just talk and brainstorm about creating a new musical together…in other words, sow the seeds of what might be our first exciting musical project together.

Which is exactly what we did at our first initial meeting this week, and it went very well.

Pure bliss.

Well, truth be told, he’s a much much more accomplished writer than I as a composer…so I really hope that if we actually work together, that I can uphold my end of the deal on the composition part. (Y’know, bring my stuff to the table as well.)

But I’m glad that on our first meeting, we both articulated our end goals (as in, what we hope to ultimately achieve and where we want to go with this), and we found that we were very much on the same page, which was fantastic.

So now it’s all systems go.

2010 is gonna be a massive year!

Categorized in Arts, Musicals, Songcraft, Songwriters and Songwriting

“Midnight Train” By Alarice

Friday, 5 February, 2010 - Leave a Response

Nice to hear Class 95 playing Alarice’s song “Midnight Train” these few days.

I’ve been hearing it a few times now.

Here’s to more local music* being aired on our radio.

There was a time back in the early 90’s when local music actually received quite a bit of air time with the likes of Kick!, Lizard’s Convention, Watchmen, Padres, AWOL, Oddfellows, Lilac Saints, Naked, etc.

Then it all kinda disappeared off the airwaves.

Nowadays, I notice a lot of good young local talent coming up, many of which are highly competent singer-songwriters in their own right.

I look forward to a time in the near future when we can have many more local singer-songwriters being given the air time that they deserve.

Here’s to a revival in local music once again.

*Well, technically Alarice’s Facebook page (here) says: “Born in Auckland, New Zealand to Singaporean parents, Alarice spent her childhood as a third culture kid, growing up in Japan, Indonesia, Dubai, India, Singapore and finally Australia.”

Categorized in Media, Music, Singapore and Songs

Tell Me On A Sunday

Thursday, 4 February, 2010 - Leave a Response

One of my favourite Lloyd Webber songs.

But the version I like best is the CD recording by Sarah Brightman (from “The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection”)…it’s just that I couldn’t find that exact version on YouTube.

I love this song for a number of reasons.

Firstly, great tune and chords.

I could play it a hundred times on the piano and not get sick of it.

Secondly, I think this song is quite unique in the sense that it expresses a sentiment that very few other songs express.

It’s about a girl telling a guy to break the “bad news” (and by “bad news”, we obviously refer to the fact that he wants to leave her) to her in a gentle way.

It’s like she’s saying “don’t do this and that…but take me to so-and-so and tell me nicely on a Sunday please.”

It’s a very calm and collected sentiment, which you probably might not find very often in most other females when they’re being told that they are about to be jilted.

So in a sense she’s really cool and mature about it.

I think the words to describe the mood are “contemplative”, “pensive” and to some extent “pleading”.

And the music is slow and gentle, which is highly reflective of her mood and what she’s saying.

My favourite lines in the song are:

“Don’t want to know who’s to blame
It won’t help knowing
Don’t want to fight day and night
Bad enough you’re going”

How cool is that?

And the melody at that part is really beautiful too.

I also like:

“Don’t get drunk and slam the door
That’s no way to end this”

Great song.

Categorized in Broadway, Songs and YouTube

Renewed Motivation

Tuesday, 2 February, 2010 - One Response

After tonight, I now have a renewed interest in the future direction of Songcraft, and renewed motivation in writing songs for Songcraft once again.

Thank God for friends!

Life is good.

Categorized in Friendship, Songcraft, Songs and Songwriting

“Michael Schumacher And Felipe Massa Enjoy Comebacks In Testing”

Tuesday, 2 February, 2010 - Leave a Response

This is the kind of stuff you wanna read about on first day of testing.

Article (here).

Yeah!!!

Categorized in Formula 1 and Sports

Do Something

Monday, 1 February, 2010 - 2 Responses

“…get up outta your seat,
why don’t you do somethin’?”
- Britney Spears (“Do Somethin’”)

I’ll have to admit, sometimes I do find myself getting quite envious.

Those who know me well would know that my interests lie mainly in musical theatre.

I mean, music is cool and I love the art of songwriting and all that…but ultimately I’ve always leaned towards Broadway ever since I caught “The Sound of Music” at the Esplanade in 2005.

That kinda triggered the whole musical passion for me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Categorized in Arts, Musicals, Singapore and Theatre

“The Musical From The Inside Out”

Monday, 1 February, 2010 - 2 Responses

I just finished this book entitled “The Musical from the Inside Out” by Stephen Citron a few days ago.

It took me awhile to finish it, cos I’m a slow reader, but I’m glad I finally did.

Now I’ve read my fair share of books on musicals over the years, and I’ve got to say that this one ranks way up there among my favourites.

I like it because it talks about a lot of things which I’ve always wanted to know about, but which not many other books talk about, for example, lead sheets, orchestrators, off-broadway tryouts, etc.

Plenty of fascinating quotes and anecdotes from the world of musical theatre, which I totally enjoyed reading.

I don’t know about you, but I personally think that this has got to be one of the best books on musicals out there in terms of an overview of putting together an entire musical from scratch.

And it can be found locally too – I believe I got my copy from Page One.

Great stuff.

Categorized in Arts, Books, Broadway and Musicals

Fed Da Man!

Sunday, 31 January, 2010 - Leave a Response

So many things to blog about this weekend, where to start?

Well, nothing pleased me more this weekend than seeing Roger Federer win the Aussie Open.

Murray was never going to seriously rattle the great Roger, in my opinion.

Fed’s playing with absolutely no pressure, now that he’s passed Sampras for career Grand Slams.

Which doesn’t sound like a good thing for the rest of the field this year.

Some say Fed is past his prime.

Well, that may be true, cos I think he was at his absolute zenith circa ‘04 to ‘06.

But no matter, he’s still the best tennis player in the world right now anyway…and quite possibly the greatest there ever was.

Some say he’s playing in a weak era compared to Sampras.

Hello?

Firstly, your greatness is defined by how good you are over your generation.

Of course, great rivalries make for great legacies (in the way Ali was “fortunate” to have Foreman and Frazier to define his legacy).

Fed too, had his great rival in Nadal…and it is perhaps a tad unfortunate that Nadal seemed to have Fed’s number most of the time.

It’s the same thing for the Jordan argument – was Jordan’s era a weak era?

I don’t think so.

Jordan’s era had Barkley, Wilkins, Robinson, Malone, Drexler, Ewing, Olajuwon, Miller, etc…it’s just that he was so dominant that he made every one else look second best.

Same goes for Federer.

Secondly, how could you say that an era with the likes of Djokovic, Murray, Nadal (albeit an ailing one), Tsonga, Roddick and Del Potro is a weak one?

I don’t think it’s a weak era at all.

Which makes Federer’s accomplishments all the more incredible.

He just manages to put himself in a position to win every time.

Go Fed!

Categorized in Sports and Tennis

$3 Million?

Friday, 29 January, 2010 - Leave a Response

Recently, I was having a nice conversation with an accomplished local writer and we were talking at length about the state of musical theatre in Singapore, and at some point “Phua Chu Kang – The Musical” was brought up…which was something I had completely forgotten about.

Well, I went home that night to do some research, and apparently the musical was given the astronomical production budget of $3 million.

Now that is something which is unheard of in local musical theatre.

You could put together a bare-bones musical for around $50,000. (That’s assuming it’s a professional production whereby everyone involved needs to be paid adequately…as compared to a school production perhaps.)

With a few hundred thousand dollars, you could possibly put together a pretty decent musical production.

But with $3 million?!?

That’s an incredible sum of funding right there.

Granted, I realise that a large part of it was due to the fact that they had government backing and massive corporate sponsorship and all that.

However, I think the sad part is that almost every review I’ve come across on the internet did not rate “Phua Chu Kang – The Musical” highly.

In fact, most of the reviews I came across were extremely unfavourable.

Examples can be found (here), (here) and (here).

(I shan’t elaborate on the actual details of the production, as they have been well-documented in the links above.)

Which makes me wonder what might have been, had the $3 million been put to better use to incubate and produce not just one, but maybe two, three, or even four local musical theatre productions of outstanding quality.

I’m sure it can be done.

We have the necessary talent – the writers, the lyricists, the composers, the musicians, the arrangers, the directors, the producers, the singers, the dancers, etc.

It’s just the funding that’s sorely lacking most of the time.

Categorized in Arts, Musicals and Singapore

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