THE HEART OF JUN: MEMOIRS OF ZHAOJUN / Siong Leng Musical Association / Review

 

THE HEART OF JUN: 

MEMOIRS OF ZHAOJUN 

Siong Leng Musical Association 

Singtel Waterfront Theatre 

Friday (14 February 2025)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 February 2025 with the title "Intense reflection and melancholy in The Heart of Jun".

Nanyin (music of the south) is the music of Southern China, centred around the province of Fujian (Hokkien), which was transported to the lands of Southeast Asia during the Chinese diaspora. A two thousand-year-old tradition, its designation as a “living fossil” is a double-edge sword, emphasising its antiquity but risks becoming an immobile museum piece. 

Much credit thus goes to Singapore’s Siong Leng Musical Association for contextualising its seemingly simple content with this elegant piece of musical theatre at Esplanade’s Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts. This collaboration with playwright Katherine Chou and director Lee Yi Hsiu, both from Taiwan, yielded true dividends. 

Its plot revolved around the ballads of Wang Zhaojun, one of ancient China’s four classical beauties, who was married off by the Western Han emperor to a Xiongnu king. Undertaking a perilous journey of uncertainty, her songs were essentially laments on loss, sacrifice and homesickness. 

These were beautifully personified in the soulful voice of Lim Ming Yi, playing Azhao, a tragic character in traditional outfit who appeared distant and aloof to the chatty but diverse personalities of a modern-attired Yi Xin (Ang Xiao Ting) and the kebaya-clad Nan Jun (Jodi Chan). All three ladies, with their own aspirations and agencies, were united on a sea voyage from Fujian to Nanyang. 

In its three connected scenes, beginning with The Wind Blows Through Yanmen Pass, Azhao’s mellifluous songs in the Minnan dialect, were accompanied by pipa (played by Seow Ming Fong), sanxian (Anita Yeong), erxian (Joel Chia) and dongxiao (bamboo flute, Seow Ming Xian). With a backup ensemble of eight musicians, this set a dominant tone of melancholy and intense reflection. 

For the second scene, Family Letters Amid The Rhythm of Drums and the finale, The Treacherous Sea Outmatches Rugged Mountains, the same lament was reprised, yet sounding different on each occasion. It was as if transformations took place with a change of scenarios and fortunes, with the singing and instrumentations varied accordingly. 

The cognitive incongruences between the three protagonists soon become apparent with the sudden and repeated appearance of the play’s only male character Jian Huang (Hang Qian Chou). He was a bearer of impending doom, whether by a gale-force typhoon or bloodthirsty pirates, who shattered their illusions. Where does he come from, and why the urgent messages? 

In the third act, they (and the audience) soon realise being trapped in an eternal space and time warp, where every character is part of a ghost story. The plot twist came at just the right time, as the vessel was being dredged from the sea floor, bringing an audible gasp from the audience. 

When asked what pursuit one character would undertake after the “rescue”, her reply was to “perform Nanyin”. Thus an allegorical parallel may be inferred with the art of Nanyin being revived from the dregs of history by the implausibly young practitioners from Siong Leng. This production should be repeated, if anything to recapture its artistry and all the nuances.

Photo: Pianomaniac

Professional photography 

from Siong Leng Musical Association.