Event: “Aladdin” by W!ld Rice
Venue: Drama Centre Theatre
Run: 24th Nov – 17th Dec 2011
A Dazzling Place You Never Knew (All For Under $70)
W!ld Rice’s big year-end production “Aladdin” sees Glen Goei directing this incredibly colourful extravaganza, with two of the biggest stars from Singapore’s pop music world headlining the show.
This is “Aladdin 2.0″, not to be confused with the original “Aladdin” pantomime that W!ld Rice first staged in 2004, as it is significantly different in so many ways.
Jonathan Lim is the new bookwriter and lyricist, Elaine Chan musical directs, Richard Chia choreographs, and CK Chia is responsible for the set design.
Having Hady Mirza and Sylvia Ratonel play the lead roles of “Aladdin” and “Jasmine” for a musical is indeed an interesting experiment, considering it is their first attempt at musical theatre, but in my opinion it was an experiment which paid handsome dividends in the end.
After all, stars do help to sell a show.
Let’s get the important question out of the way first: Are the songs in “Aladdin” original?
No, all the songs are based on popular radio hits such as “Rehab”, “Dancing Queen”, “Born This Way”, “Genie in a Bottle” and “Jai-Ho”, except that some of the lyrics have been re-written under the wicked pen of Jonathan Lim in order to make the lyrics more relevant to the show.
Standout performances include the ever-reliable and ever-amazing Karen Tan, playing the role of the evil wizard Abba-k’adab-rah (who develops a strange fascination for peppering her speech with song names by a certain Swedish group not named Roxette), and the boisterous Darius Tan, playing the mother of Aladdin, who was simply a riot…
Click (here) for the rest of the review at “Buttons in the Bread”.
