Looking at NUS with Block B4 Eyes

I got my good ol’ friend from my old Junior College to get me tickets to King Edward VII Hall’s annual production, “Fame!” as he was in the cast. Of course when he’s a good ol’ buddy then you’ve got to go watch the play. Anyway, I’m into the whole “Hall Play” thing and critisizing its quality, so I’m killing the proverbial two birds with the proverbial one stone.

Apparently they had some drama with getting the license to stage Fame! and had to creatively reinterpret Fame! so that it didn’t violate too many copyright issues or something like that. Not very sure about that. But, at the bottom of the poster had the caveat:

This play is being produced by special arrangement with the Dramatic Publishing of Woodstock, Illinois.

Anyway, the play details are as follows:

6.30pm onwards on the 14 & 15 January 2006 @ UCC, NUS
Tickets: $15,$18, $50 (charity tickets)

On another hand, there is another event that I would like to attend and that is :

Topic: “George Soros & A Global Open Society: A Dialogue with a New Generation”
Venue: Padang and Canning Ballrooms, Raffles City Convention Centre
Date: Wed 11 January 2006
Time: 2.30pm to 4.30pm
Organised by Institute of South East Asian Studies (ISEAS), this exclusive event will be an interactive session in which a panel of discussants will engage Mr Soros on a variety of topics revolving around the theme “A Global Open Society”.

However, I did not managed to register in time because of the ticketing being first come first serve basis. Dang. Would have been interesting to have a chance to see the alleged architect of the 1997 East Asian Financial Crisis (as accused by Tun Dr. Mahathir a few years back).

Okay, since Chang asked about “how bad was band” anyway, might as well chip in my two cents on all of them.

Dance was commendable. Choreography and synchronization wasn’t too bad, quite immune from criticism. However, my issue with them is not with anything like that, my issue is with the influence of hip-hop. Coming from an arts perspective, I feel that its better that in any performance group, one finds his or her own style with influences from a certain genre of art, like Arabian, hip-hop, ballet, etc, especially with modern comtemporary dance in which technical and physical skill is not a huge prerequisite. Just embodying a certain genre of dance won’t separate one performance group from another.

Band was in my opinion quite bad. The first thing I noticed was that the music wasn’t gelling together like a band. It didn’t seem like a band, it was more like a few musical instruments and a singer playing in time with each other rather than “making music”. Robin’s guitar also went out of whack for a bit, causing him to put it down for one of his songs. His speaker cabinet was also placed too close to the drums, thus causing the drums to resonate, making a funny vibrating sound, whenever he played a low note. The female singer also sometimes missed a beat when coming in, but that’s excusable, I do that all the time myself, so I can’t criticize it. Robin was okay with the vocals, but at this stage of skill and practice I rather he’d either just play or just sing and not do both at the same time.

I can’t comment on Xinyao. I don’t know how to comment on Chinese singing because I’ve never really heard the original songs and all I can say is that the same songs get sung over and over again. I’ve heard the songs being sung today during the Xinyao performance or here and there. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not.
Ken and Chiao Ru were okay.

I can’t comment on the Choir group either. It wasn’t exceptionally good, still had a few patches here and there but overall they are listenable and provided entertainment. Technically, sound support for group singing is very hard to manage because of the use of condenser microphones to capture the entire group singing on the speakers. Its hard to do because we have to keep the volume at low levels as feedback occurs easily. I’d prefer them to go without mics and use natural voice projection instead. Use deep breathing people!

I don’t know if I should comment on Miss Abigail who dragged me on stage as a source of humour with Kurien and Alvin. Whatever. I will not speculate on “her” true gender, or her singing ability, or her material. At least I didn’t get skewered in my neck.

This is what I discovered on IVLE today — King Edward VII Hall are staging Fame, the musical on the 14th and 15th of January 2006. Here’s the link.

From IVLE announcements:
The coming production is an adaptation of the world-famous, well-loved, musical Fame! conceived by David de Silva and adapted to stage by Christopher Sergel. Set in New York’s School of Performing Arts, Fame! is a coming-of-age tale of one year in the life of a group of young performers with nothing in common but their dream: to shine on stage. This production features an all-student cast and production crew from King Edward VII Hall. And will be performed in the University Cultural Centre Theater.

Here’s what I think they got right: by using a script that is already tested to be a good script (or at least a bearable script), they’ve already solved multiple problems. However, comparisons to the original movie or the professional stage musicals are inevitable. Hopefully their actors and actresses can sing and dance at the same time.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to find the movie (which won two Oscar awards) and watch it during the holidays, and probably ask someone who has seen another staging of Fame to comment on it.

Tickets go at $15, $18 and $50.