SCENTS OF JOSEPHINE
Bellepoque
Black Box @ Drama Centre
Thursday (27 April 2017)
To
do justice to a well-loved historical personality within a production of 90
minutes is a tall order. All the more if that happened to be the multi-faceted
artist that was America-born singer-dancer Josephine Baker (1906-1975) who made
her fame and fortune in France.
Part
of the Voilah! French Festival, Scents Of Josephine was not a
musical, but a play by Singapore-based French playwright Marc Goldberg with
musical pieces running through its thread. Baker does not appear as a
character, instead her life and legacy were mirrored by four women in the form
of a backstage discussion.
Reflections
of Josephine might also have been an apt title, but
the audience got many whiffs and wafts of Baker, which made much sense of Scents.
While none of the women remotely resembled the sexy and seductive
African-American waif in her prime, but their totally riveting story-telling
hit the mark.
An
air of informality presided over Samzy Jo's stage direction, and the audience
unsuspectingly becoming eavesdroppers on the foursome. British Afro-Caribbean
actress Sharon Frese had the only non-singing part, and she immediately broke
the ice by raising the topic of race, illustrated by the irony of black women
straightening their hair and lightening their skin to appear whiter.
With
race out in the open, there was scope to discuss gender, sexual orientation,
social status, equality, human rights and other seemingly contentious subjects.
Baker was a woman ahead of her time, breaking all barriers in her performances,
dances, costumes and alternative lifestyles. She was an icon like today's
Madonna, Britney Spears, Rihanna and Kardashians all rolled into one.
The
three vocalists provided different vistas to Baker's personality. French jazz
singer Andayoma portrayed strength and resilience, Singaporean musical theatre
singer Caitanya Tan oozed youthfulness and sexuality, while Italian operatic
soprano Sabrina Zuber exposed frailty and vulnerability.
The
songs, well-chosen and neatly dovetailed ino the script, ran the gamut from
American musical theatre (Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin), Latino
hits (Besame Mucho, Brasil) to French chansons (Trenet, Scotto, Misraki).
The “orchestra” provided by Robert Casteels (piano), Viviane Salin (violin) and
Balraj Gopal (synthesiser guitar) also included a segment of Stravinsky's The
Rite Of Spring to depict Baker shocking her German audiences.
An
attempt to include Singapore into the framework was mercifully limited to few
Singlish phrases, but there was a comical scene when 1930s news snippets on
Baker in The Straits Times were quoted. The audience also learns that a 1938
world tour (including Singapore) was unfortunately cancelled just before the
outbreak of war.
The
singularly most gripping scene was Frese reliving Baker's 1963 speech alongside
Martin Luther King in his Civil Rights Movement march on Washington D.C., a
veritable showstopper. What about Baker's infamously skimpy “skirt of bananas”?
It finally made an appearance in the final ensemble song Feeling Like A
Million, on a more than adequately covered Caitanya Tan. Was this a case of
“less flesh please, we're Singaporeans”?
 |
| Playwright Marc Goldberg speaks. |
Photographs by the kind permission of Bellepoque.
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