Pagoda Street

Pagoda Street is a musical that walks along the middle of the road. No, it is not a musical with safe middle-of-the-road music. Rather, it is a musical that treads dangerously along the narrow gap between traffic flowing in opposite directions. It is a musical that is perched precariously between genres,  between farce and serious drama, between pop and classical music, between a musical and a play with music, between lead roles and ensemble cast, between an amateur and a professional production, between success and failure.

The musical shifts between farce and serious drama, and while you're laughing your guts out, you are slipped in a dose of hard-hitting axioms, and your laughter is stopped dead in its tracks. The music is pop but the arrangement is semi-classical which makes it a bit too heavy for comedy. Pagoda Street is a musical, but there are long stretches of dialogue without music, and it becomes a play with music. The story is about Asians and their cultures, but it is expressed through a Broadway art form. It is ensemble acting, but the distribution of lines is unequal, so that leads emerge. It is written and acted by amateurs but the production is almost professional. Should it be reviewed as a student production or a professional piece? I chose the latter.

What is remarkable is that the book, lyrics and music are all written by Declan Ee, a second year Singapore law student studying at University College, London. And if that were not enough, he also directed the show. In general, he succeeds admirably, and it may seem rather churlish of me to suggest that he is not equally proficient in all areas. So shoot me!
 
Pagoda Street is the story of two feuding shop-owners whose constant quarreling exasperates their landlord. One of the shop-owners is the despicable Ah K, a debt collector played by law student Ling Tiankai. Ah K is the worst type of racist and male chauvinist. He mistreats his long-suffering milquetoast girlfriend, Bambi, played by Eva Tan, who tolerates his meanness. She would like to marry Ah K, but he has never seen the need for it. Playing opposite them is a married couple, Khartik, a barber played by Adrian Pillay, and his wife Sangee, played by Valerie Loh. Their landlord is Paul, played by Hadri Sopra, whose finances the overseas studies of his girlfriend, Katherina, played by Rosalind Pho. Part narrator and part go-between is Musha, a caretaker, played by Anwar Zakaria.
 
At first the story seems to focus on Paul and his girlfriend Katherina. Initially she is a sweet gentle person. She goes overseas for her studies, and on her return, she has changed to become a more self-assured, scheming person. Paul remains naive and faithful to her, until he discovers her schemes. And up to this point the story is quite predictable. However, the ending is, at least for me, a slight surprise. I am misled to think that they are the main characters because they have been allocated the best songs.
 
What seemed initially to me to be a peripheral story, a subplot, is the relationship between Ah K and Bambi. However, as the story progresses, Ah K and Bambi take on center stage and upstage Paul and Katherina. In part this is because Ling Tiankai and Eva Tan are both better actors and singers than the rest. Moreover, in this musical, Ah K is the most interesting person with full character arc development. Somehow the shift in the center of gravity in leads was a bit disconcerting to me. This was reinforced during the curtain calls, when, Ah K and Bambi were not granted top recognition (i.e. final bow).
 
The music is good. The arrangement is interesting. Some of the songs are arranged in a minor key with strings and a heavy bass pulse, reminiscent of new age music. This gives a feeling that the musical is a tragedy. Hence it is a surprise that in fact the general tenor of the musical is in fact a farce. The arrangement is not helped by the fact that the instruments sounded very synthesized, and that the arranger went to town with cymbal sounds.