Since the
bad old colonial days, the Brits have been doing theatre in Singapore. The
most lasting relic of that habit - the Stage Club - has put on plays year
after year since 1945, staffed by a mixed group of mainly British expatriates
and Singaporeans.
It's only fair, one supposes, that the French should have their turn.
So enter Sing'theatre, a "non-profit professional Singaporean theatre
company with a French touch", by its own description. Founder Nathalie
Ribette has worked for ten years in theatre in Singapore, and has spent
the last two years studying the evolution of the performing arts in
Singapore, supported by the likes of Hossan Leong, Glen Goei, Alvin
Tan and Haresh Sharma. No Regrets: A Tribute to Edith Piaf
is her first production under the aegis of her company, though first
produced and directed by her in 2004 in partnership with the Alliance
Française. Written by Britisher Philip McConnell, a regular director
at the Stage Club, the musical revue celebrates of the life and work
of the famed Parisian diva.
No Regrets is an excellent show - a night of relentlessly
classy entertainment, featuring lovely renditions of Piaf's songs and
littered with intriguing biographical nuggets provided by MC Hossan
Leong. The staging was minimal, but the height of chic, recalling a
relaxed Parisian cabaret - the band of accordion, piano, drums, violin
and double bass took centrestage, while Leong and the vocal quartet
sat round a café table to the side, occasionally advancing downstage
to the mikes to sing. The predominant costume colour was black, with
hints of red and white, as was the preference of Piaf herself - even
the Front-of-House crew wore "little black dresses" trimmed
with red to set the stage.
As soon as the quartet began the show with Piaf's signature song, La
Vie En Rose, the tone for the evening was set: the four singers
each brought very different performance styles and energies to their
interpretations of the music, suggesting the complexity of the woman
herself; a stirring variety in the monomania of idolatry. Oddly, their
characters seemed to correspond to the four alchemical elements: Aurore,
a 20 year-old performer from France, seemed to personify air with her
waify presence and gentle but occasionally playful style of singing;
the well-known Emma Yong embodied water with her stronger but still
delicate performance style; jazz singer Asha smouldered like fire, with
her robust but sanguine and seductive voice, while Leigh McDonald took
on the qualities of earth with her deep register and powerfully dramatic
musical renditions.
The four worked well together on stage - subtle choreographies of simple,
co-ordinated movements in front of the mikes focussed the eye more gracefully
and effectively than a loud can-can or tango would have. And in their
own way, all four were wonderful - it's hard to pick a favourite between
Yong's bitterly romantic Lovers for A Day, Asha's bluesy The
Three Bells and McDonald's violently wrought performance as a lovelorn
prostitute in The Accordionist. However, Aurore's almost ethereal
fragility, which ranged from evocative nostalgia in Sous le ciel
de Paris to an infectious playfulness in the clap-along Milord
made her the most obvious star of the evening, best representing Edith
Piaf in her incarnation as the Little Sparrow.
With such expressive singing, it was perhaps of little consequence
that Aurore, Yong and Hossan Leong sang many songs exclusively in French
- a little introductory patter by Leong was enough to set the context
for each new song, and the obvious emotion of the music obviated the
need for supertitles. The themes of passion and obsessive love in Piaf's
works came out strongly in the show - breathtakingly overleaping translation
barriers in intense solos such as Padam... Padam...
Yet it might be this feature that identified No Regrets as
an uncomprisingly ambassadorial work, focussed on celebrating l'esprit
francaise rather than considering any intersections with Singapore
identity. One finds it odd that after so much interaction with the local
theatre community, Ribette stuck so forcefully to her French roots -
there was no exploration of any new insight that might be shed into
the works of Piaf from a Singapore perspective; no evident attempt to
create something new to justify the "Sing" in the name of
Sing'theatre.
McConnell's script, at least, took a daringly fresh approach to biography
by skipping almost stochastically through incidents in Piaf's life -
beginning, naturally, with her legendary birth on the pavement of Rue
de Belleville 72, but meandering without discernible pattern through
her innumerable romances and habits, reaching an emotional climax with
the death of her great love Marcel Cerdan in plane crash, set to songs
like My God and Hymn to Love. This liberating treatment,
however, was at times a trifle disorienting to the viewer, depriving
him of a sense of progress through the no-interval performance - on
one occasion, I consulted my watch, perplexed that the show had continued
so long after Piaf's death from cancer.
As MC, Leong took a casual, affable approach towards narration, which
worked well - save for the odd moments when he tripped up on his lines.
As a singer, actor and Ambassadeur Francophone, he must have been an
obvious choice for the cast of this show, yet I question the decision
that led him to play the parts as Piaf's lovers in several duets. We've
known Leong too well as an animated, stick-figured comedian who occasionally
does drag - it's hard to imagine him as a straight prize-fighter in
desperate love with Emma Yong.
On the whole, however, No Regrets acquitted itself admirably
as the maiden production of Sing'theatre, coming through with high production
values and a gargantuan dose of sophistication. Fans of the musical
revue would do well to look out for their next production planned for
2008, a similar revue of the music of legendary Belgian singer Jacques
Brel.
It's probably irrelevant, then, that I remain troubled by the cultural
politics of the show, which, though locally-written and starring prominent
local theatre and music practitioners alongside French artistes, was
so culturally one-sided that it's hardly "theatre with a French
touch" - it's French theatre with a spot of homegrown talent added.
It'd be wonderful if the group goes further than simply feeding palatable
nostalgia to French expatriates and Singaporean Europhiles; nostalgia
for a Paris that existed before it was swallowed up by immigrants and
rap. What if it were to devise a play on Singaporeans' encounters with
French culture, which could be brought to France itself for performance?
But of course, producing musical medleys is the safe and commercially
viable thing to do; a terribly Singaporean decision, on reflection.
As of now, Sing'theatre's made its first steps to establish itself in
the larger calendar of classy entertainment. Perhaps - like many a post-colonial
- it only needs time to let itself go native.
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"The themes of passion and obsessive love in Piaf's works came
out strongly in the show - breathtakingly overleaping translation barriers
in intense solos such as Padam... Padam..."
Credits
Director: Nathalie Ribette
Musical Director: Peter Stead
Writer: Philip McConnell
Stage Manager: Juraidah Rahman
Sound Designer: Hervé Ribette
Lighting Designer: Suven Chan
Costume Designer: Violaine Du Roizel-Marlier
Make-up Designer: Elaine Lee
Hair Designer: Ashley Lim Salon
Backstage Crew: Cheryl Tan, Sylvia Kho
Cast: Hossan Leong, Leigh McDonald, Emma Yong, Asha, Aurore
Pianist: Bang Wenfu
Accordionist: Daniel Blayo
Brandon Wong: Double-Bassist
Drummer: Tony Zee
Violinist: Chu Tzy Ren
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