'The LKY Musical' in SG57

I didn't watch 'The LKY Musical' when it was SG50. Now it's SG57, I've been coerced to watch this musical. You know how I feel about musicals. As much as I admire Kwa Geok Choo, I didn't even bother to watch her story produced by Toy Factory. This one lasted 150 minutes, with a 20-minute intermission. To have to sit through a theatrical CV of the esteemed political titan's life spanning 25 years, was not my idea of an enjoyable show. 

I attended the musical for various other reasons (say, for the friends who flew into town for a night or two) than actually wanting to watch it for the topic, the music or the actors. Of course I wouldn't be able to tell any improvements to the story or changes to the songs between the first staging in 2015 and this one in 2022. 

Still staged by Aiwei and Singapore Repertory Theatre, the large-scale musical is directed by Steven Dexter, with a book by Tony Petito, and a storyline by Meira Chand. The songs are composed by Dick Lee who rearranged and tweaked them for this year, and the orchestrations are done by Bang Wenfu. The lyrics were written by Laurence Olivier Award-winning Stephen Clark. Seasoned theater thespian Adrian Pang reprised his role, and shared the stage with Kit Chan. (That role was previously played by Sharon Au.) 

This isn't a musical that could travel. I'm not sure which city would be that welcoming of a musical about LKY. Hurhurhur. He's a respected statesman. Some bits of the musical are done in Hokkien, especially the parts spoken by the trishaw riders. The surtitles were shown in Chinese only. Needless to say, the friends didn't understand all of it. They asked if it felt weird hearing the dialogue in dialect and then they slipped back into English for the songs. Not really though. I thought the transition went pretty smoothly.

The set is beautifully designed; it did wonders to create different scenarios for musical. The lyrics are kinda fun. Not bad at all. However, I feel that the vocal talents of the lead actors are woefully under-utilized. The melodies and songs didn't do justice to Kit Chan's voice (which has fully recovered from surgery in 2014). There wasn't anything outstanding about the music or the melodies. As a musical, they were simply utilitarian.