A Singaporean In Paris

Event: A Singaporean in Paris
Venue: DBS Arts Centre
Run: 14th Apr – 24th Apr 2010

Before the concept of book musicals came about, song and dance at the theatre came mainly in the form of musical revues.

Sing’theatre’s latest offering is exactly that – a musical revue that tells the story of a Singaporean KQ (played by Hossan Leong) and his experiences whilst working and living in Paris.

To cut the long story short, I didn’t exactly find myself having a thoroughly enjoyable experience, partly because I felt the plot was way too thin.

However, this is no fault of the production’s, simply because they never claimed to be a book musical in the first place.

The very nature of musical revues is that they give you song and dance with a faint semblance of a plot.

And what you had in “A Singaporean in Paris” was plenty of song and dance, threaded briefly together by a few lines of dialogue in between…for the sole purpose of leading into the next song.

There were many French songs performed during the course of the revue (at least twenty one of them), and I gather that they are well-known French hits.

I was only familiar with two of them though – “She” (made famous by Elvis Costello) and “My Way” (made famous by Frank Sinatra).

Both are French tunes, by the way.

Performance-wise, there’s nothing much else you can say really, with a stellar cast featuring Hossan Leong, Emma Yong, George Chan, Leigh McDonald, and Robin Goh.

The four- piece band, headed by musical director Elaine Chan, was faultless as well.

Special mention must go to the choreography by George Chan, which I thought was utterly delightful.

All in all, I dare say you might enjoy the production more if you were French, or if you were very familiar with French culture, because there were a number of jokes which tried to poke fun at Parisian life, and also, the sheer number of hit French songs would have definitely pleased anyone who was familiar with them.