This year-end review is rather late, but better late than never. It seems to me that the arts scene in Singapore was quieter, not just due to the one-year break of the Singapore Arts Festival, but the number of new works being premiered.
For theatre, it seemed to be a year of re-runs and restaging. Having said that, here are the shows that I have enjoyed or felt offered something different.
12 Angry Men by Nine Years Theatre, at the Huayi Festival. What was significant about this production was how director Nelson Chia had managed to get 12 mandarin speaking male actors for this show. From the audience feedback session, one of the actors Johnny Ng helped brush up the delivery of lines of the other actors. Johnny Ng won the Best Supporting Actor award at the recent Life! Theatre Award 2014 and whole cast won the Best Ensemble. Director Nelson Chia won Best Director and Wong Chee Wai received the Best Set Design award. It is good to see that in addition to The Theatre Practice and Drama Box, we have another up and coming Chinese theatre group in Singapore.
Illogic by Cake Theatrical Productions. A very different and stripped down Cake production, where the characters were generally "normal". The 2 actors Noorlinah Mohamed and Edith Podesta held the attention of the audience. Edith Podesta won the Best Actress Award at the recent Life! Theatre Award, though I prefer Noorlinah's performance. The production design was also of high standard.
The Finger Player's The Book of Living and Dying. Restaged at the Esplanade Theatre Studio after first premiered at the Singapore Arts Festival Village, this production had a good script, a good cast (in particular Oliver Chong as the Cat), puppetry and a production team that created the right ambience for the show. Imagined how chalk drawings could be incorporated into the performance. A pity that this production was not nominated for any Life! Theatre Awards.
Pangemonium's
Next to Normal. A beautiful script on mental illness. A good ensemble cast (Sally Ann Triplett, Adrian Pang, Julia Abueva) made it one of the most engaging productions last year. A big winner at the Life! Theatre Awards. I hope that Pangemonium would stage an original work one day.
As mentioned earlier, there were many restagings of Singaporean/ Malaysian works. Of these, I enjoyed 2 productions by Wild Rice:
Importance of Being Ernest, and Alfian Sa'at's Asian Boys Vol 1. Other productions included the enjoyable staging of Checkpoint Theatre's
Atomic Jaya; Sight Line Production staging of Jean Tay's Everything But The Brain (directed by Derreck Chew and Engie Ho); new outfit Our Company staging of Leow Puay Tin's 3 Children and Ovidia Yu's Hokkien Me.
There were not many foreign theatre groups preforming in Singapore. One that I was impressed with would be Complicite's
Shun Kin. An interesting story about a wilful and cruel shamisen teacher, and her relationship with the faithful servant and pupil. A disciplined cast, interesting use of puppetry, beautiful staging.
The Integrated Resorts also provided entertainment to the masses. While Resorts World Sentosa focuses on long run locally-produced show, Marina Bay Sands brought in several musicals to its stage, mainly by BASE Entertainment Asia. The few shows that I enjoyed (again) included
Phantom Of the Opera,
Bjorn Again,
Starlight Express and contemporary acrobatic performance
Le Noir.
Talking about musicals, I also attended 2 well produced mini-musicals by local groups: Derrick Chew's
Edges The Musical and Theatre Lab's
Songs for New World. A modest budget production, but good effort put into it.
On the pop and contemporary music side, my favourite would be British soul artist
Joss Stone and Mali singer
Salif Keita at the Mosaic Music Festival. I also enjoyed the easy going nature of acoustic guitarist
Adrian Legg at the Esplanade Recital Studio in April. And jazz legend
Tony Bennettt showed that age was no barrier in entertaining the audience at the equally impressive Star Theatre in September.
 |
| 3D glasses |
It was good to catch Kraftwerk a second time, this time with 3D visuals. Technical breakdowns during certain segments did not damp the enthusiasm of the fans - in fact we now know the consoles on those machines did serve some purpose!
The Social Media Award held in May at the Marina Bay Sands brought many stars to Singapore. The concert by
Aerosmith at Garden by the Bay was definitely a highlight. Steve Tyler possessed the charisma of a rock star and he held the attention of the audience well. The band as a whole was electric.
The traditional arts continued to flourish under changing social environment. While the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, being a national company, continues to lead in the traditional arts arena, other traditional arts groups were putting up interesting programmes as well.
For example, Cultural Medallion recipient and Chinese orchestra conductor Tay Teow Kiat presented 2 programmes which I attended last year. The first concert with the City Chinese Orchestra, entitled A Southern Breeze - Music of the Min Nan Chinese, featured music from and inspired by the Hokkien people. The next programme, Charms of Northern Shaanxi, was by the Ding Yi Music Company featuring the vocals of Wang Er Ni Vocal Concert. Both concerts were well attended and proved that with good programming, audience would come. Hopefully Dr Tay Teow Kiat would be given more resources in his arts creation.
I saw a few local Chinese Opera performances last year and I was impressed with the standards and dedication of the Teochew, Hainanese and Beijing Opera groups. (see my blog write-up
Chinese Opera article 1,
Nam Hwa Opera). It is an uphill task sustaining and finding new blood for this art form but for the time being, these groups are doing alright.
The arts scene in Singapore is definitely crowded, with local productions and foreign shows making stops in Singapore. It is inevitable that attendance at some shows are less than satisfactory. Maybe it is time to recognise that less is more for the arts scene to be sustainable. Let's hope that 2014 would be a good year for Singapore arts lover.
No comments :
Post a Comment