Take a bow, musicals (Life!, Pages C6-C7, 17 March 2011)

This was a report on the nominees for the 11th Life! Theatre Awards.  Ms Faith Ng, an English Literature and Theatre Studies undergraduate at NUS and a first-time playwright, was nominated for her play wo(men), a sensitive family drama about three generations of women.  wo(men) received nominations in a total of four categories, including Best Original Script, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Set Design.  

11TH LIFE! THEATRE AWARDS PRESENTED BY F&N SEASONS

Three song-and-dance extravaganzas lead the nominations this year

Sing it out: December Rains (above), Liao Zhai Rocks and The Full Monty were three of the musicals that rocked the local theatre scene last year. — PHOTOS: TOY FACTORY PRODUCTIONS, THE THEATRE PRACTICE, PANGDEMONIUM! PRODUCTIONS

Last year was the year of the musical. From stormy historical dramas to supernatural tales to men doing a striptease, these slick all-singing, all-dancing packages made a splash on the local stage.

Of the six that were staged last year, five were original Singaporean ones with scripts and scores by home-grown artists.

They come with a level of ambition and scale, with elaborate sets and feisty casts.

These include December Rains, a musical written by local xinyao composer Liang Wern Fook and directed by Toy Factory Productions’ Goh Boon Teck.

A turbulent love story set in 1950s to 1980s Singapore, it starred local singer Kit Chan in a comeback musical role as the lead, an idealistic schoolgirl-turned-embittered mother.

Venturing to more supernatural territory was The Theatre Practice’s Liao Zhai Rocks!, which married rock music with a retelling of a classic Chinese ghost story. It was written by Wu Xi and directed by him as well as Kuo Jian Hong.

Then there was The Full Monty, the swaggeringly confident debut production by the newly formed Pangdemonium! Productions, started by husband-and-wife duo Adrian and Tracie Pang.

The heart-warming comedy about a gang of unemployed men who form a striptease act was a surprise hit and was easily one of the most enjoyable nights out at the theatre last year.

So it comes as no surprise that these are the three most-nominated productions in this year’s Life! Theatre Awards, an annual event that honours the best theatre professionals in Singapore today.

F&N Seasons, a range of fruit teas and Asian drinks by food and beverage company Fraser & Neave, has returned as a sponsor this year for the second time. The awards ceremony, an invitation-only luncheon event, will be held at the St Regis hotel on April 4.

The awards are judged by a panel comprising theatre academic Dr K.K. Seet, online arts journal The Flying Inkpot co-editor Matthew Lyon, Lianhe Zaobao and The Straits Times arts reviewers Chew Boon Leong and Adeline Chia, as well as a new addition to the team, Dr Robin Loon, who is a theatre academic and a dramaturg.

Both December Rains and Liao Zhai Rocks! garnered seven nominations each, including the top awards of Production Of The Year and Best Director. The Full Monty received six nominations, including three acting nominations for Adrian Pang, Andy Hockley and Denise Tan.

To recognise the contributions and excellence of the musical theatre scene last year, the judges have introduced a new category to the awards this year: Best Original Score.

The nominees for that category are: December Rains, Liao Zhao Rocks!, the Wild Rice pantomine Cinderel-Lah!, the Dick Lee musical Fried Rice Paradise and the Buddhist extravaganza by Benny Wong and Goh Boon Teck, Maha Moggallana.

Dr Seet says that musicals have always been the most popular genre in local theatre. ‘Singapore theatre companies are becoming savvier in pandering to this target market by siphoning off the audience who will unhesitatingly fork out for a musical import such as Les Miserables or Phantom Of The Opera.’

He adds that these commercial productions may have been a response to the more financially competitive times, but ‘what is laudable in the current spate of musicals is the use of home-grown talents: Adrian Pang, Kit Chan, Taufik Batisah, Joanna Dong, George Chan and Denise Tan.

‘You don’t need a Laura Fygi or Fei Xiang to helm the production in order to bring in the crowds or to raise the standard.’

December Rains director Goh, 39, says he has always been interested in Mandarin musicals since staging I Have A Date With Spring in 1995.

‘I love using beautiful music to tell a story and I like the impact it has, which resonates in you for a very long time.’

His next production is 881 – The Musical, the stage version of Royston Tan’s hit getai film of the same title. It will be on at the Esplanade Theatre next month.

Pangdemonium!’s founder Adrian Pang was a bit less restrained in his reaction. He received news of the nomination in the middle of rehearsing for the recently concluded run of Closer. He joked: ‘My immediate reaction was to tear off all my clothes and go running down the street. No one would bat an eyelid because our office is on Joo Chiat Road and the locals are used to that kind of thing.’

On a more serious note, he said: ‘The Full Monty was a real labour of love for us all, so to be given the nod for our debut production is very special indeed.’

Indeed, even if these commercial productions lead the pack, there are smaller, more intimate contenders in the nomination list this year, reflecting the diversity in the local theatre scene.

This includes Best Production nominee A Cage Goes In Search Of A Bird, which ran for a weekend in June last year at Lasalle College of the Arts.

The fragmented, existentialist play about a group of office drones is also in the running for Best Ensemble for A Group Of People, comprising Nelson Chia, Oliver Chong, Koh Wan Ching and Timothy Nga.

The black box show Model Citizens by The Necessary Stage scored five nominations this year: Production Of The Year, Best Director, Best Script and two Best Actress nominations.

The Haresh Sharma play, directed by Alvin Tan, revolves around three women, a Chinese-speaking MP’s wife, a Peranakan woman whose son commits suicide and an Indonesian maid. Both Karen Tan and Siti Khalijah are nominated for Best Actress.

Then there is Teater Ekamatra’s Charged, an army play about race relations, which received four nominations: Best Original Script for Chong Tze Chien, Best Supporting Actor for Yazid Jalil and two Best Supporting Actress nominations for Serene Chen and Aidli Alin Mosbit.

Besides the familiar theatre stalwarts, the list also introduces some fresh, young faces to the theatre scene. Young actor Yazid, 22, who played the cocksure, aggressive Malay soldier in Charged, is nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

First-time playwright Faith Ng, 23, who is an English literature and theatre studies student at the National University of Singapore, is nominated for her play wo(men), a sensitive family drama about three generations of women.

Then there is relative newcomer Adrian Tan, 26, who designed the innnovative lighting for A Cage Goes In Search Of A Bird, creating a whimsical universe of swinging lamps and low-hanging bulbs.

And finally, there are the veterans in other industries who are venturing into theatre for the first time. Songwriting duo Xiaohan and Eric Ng are stalwarts in the Mandopop scene, but worked on their first musical, Liao Zhai Rocks!, together.

Lyricist Xiaohan, 37, who has written songs for singers such as Sandy Lam, Tanya Chua and Jaycee Chan, penned 22 songs for the Mandarin musical.

She says writing it was a gruelling experience, having to balance the radio-friendly Western rock score by Ng and the literary Chinese language of the script. ‘I was supposed to be the person who glued the two together,’ she says. ‘I spent my holiday in Europe holed up in a tiny room near a heater, writing ghost story songs.’

Her trick? To insert songs where characters were speaking and emoting, rather than narrating.

Ng, 35, said he was ‘honoured’ to be nominated, and enjoyed writing for the ‘alternative musical’.

‘I was given a lot of space to experiment, and it’s always good to try new things.’

THE NOMINEES

PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR