Buttons In The Bread

Not unfamiliar to the supernatural and comedy, Jonathan Lim marries these 2 in his latest (re-run) of H is for Hantu.(“Hantu” is the malay word for “ghost”)

The story tells of how a kampung is set to be phased out by HDB to build more flats. However, unbeknownst to HDB, there are actually 2 kampungs (1 for the hantus, which was essentially a piece of forest behind the “living” kampung). Sazali, a boy who wants to preserve the kampung, tries to rally the kampung folks to support him, but to no avail, so he turns to his hantu friends (yes, he sees dead people) who tries to convince the HDB officer (Angie) handling the relocation otherwise. However, they discover she’s being haunted by a child ghost and he wants to help her (in the hope of her helping them). It turns out she used to live in the kampung and the child ghost was her best friend who’s been using her to search for something they buried together. Angie had also been fighting for good packages for the kampung folks as the HDB project must still go own. Eventually, they do get to preserve the forest part where the hantus lived with the help of environmentalists (through Angie’s help). So all’s well that ends well.

Besides the less than perfect recorded music (it sounded a bit noisy with static and some glitches) and the rather mixed genre of songs which was a bit distracting, I found it enjoyable, though a tad long. Maybe because I expected a 90-minute musical (from sistic’s info) but it turned out to be 2 hours (excluding the delay and intermission). No particular song really stood out for me, but I probably took more notice of the pontianak’s theme since it’s totally based on what is known of it, like the parts with “hitting the nail on the head”, “frangipani fragrance”, etc. Think Jo Tan did well in that role as a less than scary pontianak, Cik Pon.

It started off with  Sazali telling stories but it progressed differently, although there were still narratives along the way. The references were funny in a “natural” way that worked. I think the wayang kulit performance was rather well done for something like this and they managed to inject Singapore references into it with humour. It gave a contrast of what we used to value and the modern lifestyle. The warm, traditional “storytelling” that drew people, in the cold face of technology (“multimedia presentation” as Angie said). The puppets were pretty impressive too, especially with the massive Hantu Galah (tall ghost).

And what’s a show about ghosts without a scary moment? Maybe the “hantus” portrayed from the beginning were not scary and the story was getting “comfortable”. But the turn the turning point happened shortly before the interval when Angie suddenly appeared like a zombie with a pale small puppet sitting on her shoulder (supposedly the ghost of a little girl). That was super CREEPY! The design of the puppet was such: white blank face, eyes with dark rings (making it look hollow) and dressed in a white dress. Creepy it really was, that it chilled my heart, so much so that I nearly grabbed J’s arm. It took some minutes to get back into the “light-heartedness” of the show again. I must say the “jolt” was pretty successful in producing “tension” and made me wonder about what’s going to happen in the later part of the show (but after the shock, I did consider a few scenarios that might have been expected). It kind of raised my rating of the show a little. Fortunately, the doll used later was less frightening. I think it was the suddenness of the appearance that spooked me. But as agreed with J, it did shift the initial focus of saving the kampung away, even though the ending brought it back again. But I guess it was intended, to create that “twist” to the story.

I would say it ended off in a happy mood, as a musical comedy would, with a medley of songs sung in the show.

Event: “H is for Hantu” by Stages
Venue: National Museum Gallery Theatre
Run: 23rd Mar – 3rd Apr 2011

I’d heard great things about this production ever since it completed its first run in 2009 at the Alliance Francaise Theatre.

So it was with great excitement that I attended “H is for Hantu” for the first time with Ilkosa at the National Museum Gallery Theatre (which somehow happens to be one of my favourite theatre venues in Singapore) a few days ago.

I guess you can always be assured of a quality production whenever Jonathan Lim and the gang from Stages are involved in a production.

The first thing that surprised me was the sheer number of teenagers present at the theatre that evening.

In fact, the theatre was so full that many of them had to sit on the floor right at the front, just under the noses of the performers, lending an air of cosiness and intimacy to the show, as if we were all transported back to the kampung days when people huddled around to listen to a ghost story.

Just how producer Terence Tan managed to so successfully attract that many teenagers to the musical is anyone’s guess.

“H is for Hantu” tells the story of a local kampung village and how the protagonist Sazali, a kampung schoolboy, tries to fight for the survival of his kampung.

Along the way we are introduced to colourful hantu ghosts in the form of Cik Pon (Jo Tan), Miss P (Candice de Rozario), and other fantastical creatures such as the Hantu Galah, Hantu Batu, Pocong, and the Banana Tree Spirit.

If you had to name just one thing about the show which impressed the most, it would have to have been hands-down the puppets by puppet designer Frankie Malachi.

“H is for Hantu” boasts of some of the most incredibly exhilarating and imaginative puppets I’ve ever seen.

Just when you were wondering how they were going to pull off the tall giant hantu (was it the “Hantu Galah”?), along comes two sets of puppet props, the first representing the legs only and the second representing the entire upper body, that totally blow your mind away.

The actors that had to perform puppetry duties (Candice de Rozario, Johannes Hadi, Faizal Abdullah) deserve plenty of credit as well.

The Stages team also did a great job in recreating the spooky-kampung-wilderness atmosphere, and I thought the part when Cik Pon first made her entrance amidst the darkness was quite a moment.

I loved the simple yet authentic-looking set, and I thought the little lit train moving back and forth in the distance was a beautiful touch.

Many of the lines were funny, and this is what one has come to expect from the excellent writing of Jonathan Lim.

Music-wise, composer Bang Wenfu did a good job in trying to recreate the feel of traditional kampung music with the right use of musical instruments.

However, for a two-and-a-half-hour musical (by the way, how come the SISTIC website lists the run time as 1hr 30mins?), I thought “Hantu” had relatively few songs as compared to other full length musicals.

I may be wrong, but it seemed to me like there were probably, what, 5 or 6 distinct songs at most?

As such I hesitate to label “Hantu” a “musical” in the true sense of the word, as the songs did not always help move the story along…and I suppose “Hantu” is one of those anomalies that straddles between “musical” and “play”.

Or maybe you could term it as a “play with songs”.

But this is only a trivial matter.

I personally felt that at a run time of 2hr 30mins, “Hantu” did give one the feeling of being rather tedious and drawn-out at times.

Perhaps it could have been because it did not exactly manage to create enough sympathy for the characters, nor a gripping enough storyline.

It started promisingly enough with the village scene and all that, but the main thrust of the story seemed to deviate along the way – from what initially looked like a kampung schoolboy’s quest to save his village, it kind of meandered in the middle and ended up being his quest to solve the mystery of Miss Angie Chia’s past, and her relationship with the little girl ghost.

I felt it a tad strange that two of the characters that were introduced in the opening scene, namely the PE teacher and the village girl (who seemed to have a thing going for the PE teacher), never reappeared throughout the musical.

And Cik Mariam seemed under-utilised as well.

Nonetheless, I doubt the issues I had with the story would have dampened the audience’s spirits in any way, because judging by the response, it seems as if Stages has done it once again by putting up a delightful production that not only tells a uniquely local story, but also manages to successfully suspend our disbelief and turn us all into children once again, sitting by the feet of a master storyteller, watching the magic and myths unfurl before our eyes.

Event: The Lion King
Venue: Sands Theater at Marina Bay Sands
Run: 3rd Mar – 31st May 2011

A Spectacular Beyond Words

For all the supposed failings of Julie Taymor as director of the beleaguered Spider-man musical, one can never take away from her her crowning achievement that is the Disney musical “The Lion King”, winner of the 1998 Tony Award for Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical, amongst others.

Indeed, Disney’s “The Lion King” is a majestic spectacle that is beyond compare.

No amount of pre-show hype will be enough to prepare you for what is to be the most astounding and colourful spectacular that will unfurl before your eyes the moment the lights dim and the sound of the African voices begins to glow.

The opening scene itself (“Circle of Life”), possessing all the vibrance and raw energy of the great African wilderness, whereby all the animals big and small slowly paraded onstage in their colourful splendour, was mesmerising enough to immediately make you forget about the $168 hole in your pocket.

Such is the sheer power and magnetism of “The Lion King”.

And the musical went on to impress further, with fanciful stage sets and costumes that were previously unimaginable to the mind.

And it is indeed in the area of sets, and costumes especially, which I thought the musical thoroughly excelled in.

You could see that a lot of painstaking detail had been put into the creation of the beautiful costumes, not to mention the implementation of many a nifty idea here and there.

If there’s one thing “The Lion King” has succeeded in, it is to widen one’s perception on the limitations of what can be portrayed on a theatre stage.

The story of the musical rarely deviated from the cartoon, and to be honest, there was hardly any need to, because the 1994 animated film had in itself a well-contained story of a young lion being banished from his homeland by an evil uncle, and eventually returning home to avenge his father’s death and claim his rightful mandate as ruler of the land.

In terms of songs, I would say that it was the songs from the 1994 film which basically carried the musical, e.g. “Circle of Life”, “Hakuna Matata”, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight”.

The new song numbers did not really make a lasting impression, although there was a lot of indigenous African music sung and played throughout the musical, which obviously lent a great deal of authenticity and gravitas to the proceedings.

The book was well done, and there were many extremely funny lines which I enjoyed, coming mostly from Zazu in the 1st act, and Timon in the 2nd.

In fact, of all the characters in the show, I loved the Timon character the best.

Structure-wise, the biggest gripe that my fellow companion and I had was that the 1st act seemed to end on the wrong note.

One would have thought that the most appropriate point to end off the 1st act would be immediately after Mufasa dies, because that is usually the way musicals are traditionally supposed to end off their 1st act (see “West Side Story” whereby the 1st act ends with both Riff and Bernardo lying dead on the floor) as it leaves the audience with a huge sense of suspense and makes them want to stay on for the 2nd act.

However, for some strange reason the musical went one scene further and ended off after the “Hakuna Matata” scene, whereby Simba meets Timon and Pumbaa and they sing the saccherinely-optimistic number before the curtains come down.

Strange.

But that is perhaps the only negative point we could force ourselves to come up with, because “The Lion King” is quite simply the most visually-impressive musical that I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing.

The ticket price may be steeper than your average musical, but this is hardly your average musical.

A must-watch for the whole family, if not for the story or songs, at least for the sheer spectacle of it all.