Asia Major
has done the impossible. They made Children's Letters to God
into a musical that I actually enjoyed - and considering what a cynical
heathen I am, that wasn't easy.
You see, Children's Letters itself is a maddeningly saccharine
medley of lyric pabulum in celebration of the over-televised American
brat. Its plot is flimsy and predictable, its characters are essentially
cardboard cut-outs, and it doesn't even have the Godspell guts
to come out as an unashamedly Christian musical - oh no, it's all about
the universal angst of growing up, distilled from the inspirational
innocence of Stuart Hample's book of the same name.
What Asia Major did right, in my view, was to cast a small but strong
group of young people for this show (five per show, eight counting the
alternates). While not consistently excellent, these kids showed some
serious discipline and talent in performance, revealing the intensive
training that director Michael Royce and musical director Babes Conde
must have invested in this production. Almost all fell between the ages
of 8 and 13 - not an easy age group to work with - but they acquitted
themselves remarkably onstage, in both solo and group numbers, hitting
notes and performing dance routines worthy of university-age performers.
How can the theatre bitch in me fail to be impressed?
And let's not forget the kind of challenges these tykes were facing
- including, may I reiterate, a manifestly dodgy musical. The story
uses the terribly cliched device of a motley crew of school kids - the
jock with a sensitive side, the romantic, the drama queen, the brat,
and the fat nerd - but despite the first two graduating to dating and
the jock moving away to Australia, there's not much to keep us emotionally
tied to the events of the drama. How can one not be alienated, after
all, by children who seem to use every excuse in every conversation
to clasp their hands, face heavenwards, and pray? The story is a mere
vehicle for the quoting of Hample's collection of "Kids Say the Darnedest
Things About God!" clips - which is why, from the minute a girl walks
in with a pet turtle, you can be sure that the animal is going to die
in the next sixty seconds so that she can Bravely Confront the Issue
of Death. Boo-hoo.
It's a better idea to see the work as a collection of songs: longer,
thematic explorations of different children's perspectives on divinity,
as the kids ask the eternal questions, "Why does it rain?" and "Why
can't you kill off my elder sister?" But even as a revue, the work is
not ideal. The music's fine here, with a good mix of great melodies
- Sesame Street-style choruses like the Prologue run
alongside complex rounds like Daydreams and beautiful, soulful
solos like Six Hours as a Princess. But content-wise, some
songs are just mind-numbingly patronising for an adult. Like Everyone
Else teaches the fat nerd that he shouldn't desire to be an athletic
piece of jailbait, whereas Arnold is a rather pointless paean
to the merits of the pet turtle, shortly before it dies (possibly from
scorn).
Furthermore, the creators of Children's Letters have an unfortunate
agenda that causes them to raise the difficult religious questions that
children ask God ("Maybe you're on vacation / Maybe you're not really
there / Maybe we're talking to the air") only to move speedily away
from such quagmires with the attention span of a five-year-old on refined
sugar. In Ants, it merely takes one light-hearted bullying
incident to turn the bratty little sister from a murderous ant-killing
tyrant into an all-benevolent saintlet vowing never again to harm a
living creature, just as the full cast realises, in the middle of singing
When I Am in Charge, that a world without parents would not
only deliver full freedom but also (gasp!) no pocket-money! (What a
shining allegory of how atheist ethics is unworthy due to the financial
benefits of making business contacts through organised religion.)
All this is exacerbated by Asia Major's rather muddled decision to
alter some lines in the musical for a specifically Singaporean audience
- hence one girl's question, "God, can you name all the MRT stations
in Singapore? I can". It's apparently part of a greater project which
incorporates quotes from children in local countries while restaging
essentially the same musical (down to the same tacky building block
set design) as the first production in New York City. But while I'm
a fan of syncretism on principle, references to Vesak Day and National
Day simply do not sit well in as American a production as this, where
the celebration of A Simple Holiday Song involves a tribute,
not just to Christmas, but also to Hannukah (kudos to 12-year-old Sam
Langan for actually breaking into Hebrew verse at that point). Stars
and stripes are signaled even less disputably as another character immediately
pipes up, "And don't forget Kwanzaa! You can't forget Kwanzaa!" (For
the uninitiated, Kwanzaa is an exclusively African-American holiday
shortly after Christmas that is unobserved to the extent that many black
comedians make jokes about it.)
Much of this is jarring, especially through the spectacles of a reviewer
who's more used to deconstruction than snapping his fingers. Yet, crucially,
a lot of it was only marginally consequential during the actual performance.
I can't credit Asia Major with a great choice of text, but I can emphasise
my appreciation of a good cast whose solid performances were largely
able to distract me from the problems with what actually came out of
their mouths.
And while it's arguable that the kids, rather than the company, did
most of the work, I'm still impressed by the fact that a decision was
made to concentrate on eight actors alone, rather than going the school-musical
route and hiring a large horde of semi-trained rug rats to carry the
play with their cutesiness. It's a tried and tested formula for bringing
in endless friends and family and churchgoers with their hearts full
of mercy toward any tyke who might flub his lines stage centre. Much
more difficult to aim for quality; to aim to win over the arts connoisseur
as well as the soccer mom.
And I say again, I am won over. I could have been ripped off, but I
wasn't. Not even a back-up chorus was used - trust was placed
into the hands of these preteen soloists, some of which, like Aliya
Tayabali and Erica Mei Kleinman, were able to combine acting and great
singing together in a package that's rare enough in adults, let
alone children.
When you have good enough actors, an audience can fall in love with
any play for a good hour and a half, and the literary faults will only
leave a bitter taste in their mouths in the later days when they process
what they've seen. So here's a vote in favour of the production team.
We'll just have to see in the future whether they're as adept in managing
mature actors as they are children. |
"These kids showed some serious discipline and talent in performance...
How can the theatre bitch in me fail to be impressed?"
Credits
Book by: Stuart Hample
Music by: David Evans
Lyrics by: Douglas J Cohen
Based on the Book by: Stuart Hample and Eric Marshall
Director: Duncan Royce
Musical Director: Babes Conde
Musical Staging: Trish McKenna
Lighting Designer: Jane Gosnell
Producer: BB Koh
Executive Producers: Cindy Koh & Evelyn Lim
Cast: Jerone Roman Abueva, Julia Roman Abueva, Katie
Andrews, Daniel Hutchison, Erica Mei Kleinman, Sam Langan, Shanice Nathan
and Aliya Tayabali
|
