A
KNIFE IN THE DARK:
SONGS
OF KURT WELL
New
Opera Singapore
The
Chamber, The Arts House
Friday (10 April 2015 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 13 April 2015 with the title "Show with call girls, smoking, murder".
For those familiar with New Opera
Singapore's productions, especially the hilarious Opera Comique series, this
concert of songs by German composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950) was a departure from
its norm. While the 18 songs performed by 12 singers were strung together in a
neat piece of dramatisation by Goh Ming Siu that followed a discernible
story-line, the subject was anything but a laughing matter.
 |
| The Mayor (Shaun Lee) sings Mack the Knife. |
The titular A Knife In The Dark brings together Mack the Knife and Lady in the Dark, two of Weill's better known song and musical titles. The setting
also paralleled those of Weill's musical theatre, art noir with liberal doses
of social commentary, exposing the murky underbelly of modern society. This one
takes place in a Depression period brothel, with cynical characters rubbing
body parts with hopelessly naive ones amidst sexual politics and alcoholism,
complete with three murders and two suicides to boot.
 |
| Surely this must be an R(A) scene! The mayor's wife in bed before she gets offed. |
What would the censors make of three
callgirls in skimpy outfits smoking on stage, an unmade bed, shooting and
stabbings (all fatal) taking place on the floor of Parliament, once commanded
by Lee Kuan Yew? All this without a R(A) rating. Such was Robert Jenkin's stage
direction that kept the audience transfixed and guessing as to what would
happen next. The singing, accompanied by Shane Thio on clavinova, was not bad
too.
As expected, femme fatales stole the
show. Wendy Woon's Madame Lucy (above) in Somehow
I Never Could Believe was the most moving number, sung as she quits the
world's oldest profession near the end. Rebecca Li's Anna (below) provided the best
diction in husky tones, with Schickelgruber
(a parody on Hitler's original surname) and Nanna's
Lied, the last sung expertly in German. Moira Loh's seductive Barbara (below) amply
displayed her assets with foreign tongues, coping easily in the highest
registers of Barbara's Lied and Je ne t'aime pas, in German and French.
Jonathan Charles Tay (below) was the wizened
father in Where Is The One Who Will Mourn
Me When I Am Gone? and the popular September
Song. On this form, the tenor is beginning to develop a substantial and
convincing baritone voice. The son, Jonathan Khoo as the haplessly in love
Edward, cut a sympathetic figure in I Got
a Marble and a Star and Lonely House.
Ashley Chua as the equally vulnerable mayor's wife had two songs, My Ship and Breck Weaver My True Lover.
Rachel Ong, Leslie Tay, Marky Canios and
Marie Luo had bit parts as supporting characters, singing one number each
before disappearing into the shadows or being rubbed off. The eponymous Mack the Knife was sung by Shaun Lee, he
with his booming and over-emphatic voice, as the slimy mayor who becomes Mack's
first victim. So who played the murderous Macheath?
 |
| Two more deaths, and the detectives have their hands full. |
 |
| Murder most foul. The Mayor gets de-elected, but by whom? |
The shadowy criminal, represented by the
hammily sung Ballad of the Easy Life,
was revealed as tenor Lim Jing Jie, whose most highly-prized skill has to be
his disguise. He looks exactly like an accountant or tax consultant, who wields
a dagger like a ballpoint pen. His ultimate comeuppance also answers the final
question of the intrigue: who was Barbara's secret lover?
As in life, there are sob stories and
there are those which end happily ever after. The audience's lot fortunately
belonged in the latter; this rather different production by New Opera Singapore
provided over an hour and a half of uncommon entertainment. More of the same
please.
 |
| The fine cast of New Opera Singapore has excelled yet again. |
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