Event: Fantastic Entertainment Presents “The Adventures of the Mad Chinaman” (starring Dick Lee)
Venue: Esplanade Recital Studio
Run: 24th May – 26th May 2011
It’s hard to believe that Dick Lee, by far Singapore’s most accomplished and well-known singer-songwriter and composer of musicals, has not performed in a formal concert setting since his Kallang Theatre concert in 2004.
In the past few years, he has been busy with musicals such as “Fried Rice Paradise”, “Beauty World” and “P Ramlee”, creative directing for NDP, as well as being a judge on three seasons of that TV show known as “Singapore Idol”.
This year, he even found the time to set up his new entertainment company “Fantastic Entertainment”, of which tonight’s show is its inaugural production.
And it seems as if “Fantastic” is off to a great start, because word is that all three nights of this inaugural production have been sold out.
The show could just as easily been named “Life Story” or “Life in the Lion City”, but I guess these just do not pack the same punch as “The Adventures of the Mad Chinaman” does.
Indeed, the show was both an aural and visual enactment of his latest book of the same name, which chronicles the fascinating life and times of a certain Richard Lee Peng Boon.
It’s the man himself, sharing the intimate details of the first half of his life story (the second half will be told in a subsequent production) right in the comfort of his own “living room”.
Credit to Dick – inasmuch as he is a great musician, he is also a wonderful storyteller, possessing generous doses of warmth, humour and effortless charm to keep the crowd entertained for the two whole hours (even if not all the songs were able to sustain the equivalent level of interest).
His lines were delivered so naturally that sometimes you didn’t know where the script ended and where spontaneity began…
Click (here) for the rest of the article at “Buttons in the Bread”.
