Beauty World Cha Cha Cha!

nearly 1 month gone in 2008, 3 shows watched, nothing written yet, probably time to start putting the thoughts into words, else everything should soon be forgotten...

nothing better to start off the reviews of 2008 with the first musical of the year, "beauty world".

this 20-year-old musical, written by micheal chiang, with music from dick lee, is about a girl, ivy chan poh choo from batu pahat who came to beauty world in search of her long lost father. though being "20year-old", this musical does not bring on any feel of staleness or out-datedness of any form, instead, with the direction from ivan heng, who have never failed to bring in surprises (at least not in the ones which i have watched), i feel very much the mixture of modernness and the nostalgia of the 60s.

john c. dinning's set bring about the "woah" factor the first minute it was brought to the audience. a 2-tier stage of beauty world brought onto the stage proper of the esplanade, together the colourful decoration of the "stage" which really gives a "oldies, nightclub" feeling, and throw in a "live" orchestra on the upper tier of the "stage" as part of the show, i would say it's nothing short of magnificent! (poor grasp of english, thus the poor choice of vocabulary used here). perhaps, what i'm really grateful to dinning is that the choice of having the whole set relatively downstage, instead of using the whole depth of the esplanade stage. this has allowed audience sitting in circle 3 (which includes me) to have a clear sight of the whole "beauty world stage".

what's a good show without good lighting? as usual, mac's lighting is always soothing to the eyes and never failed to add elements of surprises to the show. personal favorite is the scene where he flooded the whole stage with pink and red, bringing everything to a still, highlighting the whole set, yet the set does not take over the stage, which still have show going on downstage. (shan't elaborate too much here, in case i show my lack of knowledge for lighting yet again.)

probably because i watched the second last show of the long run, one can sense the casts' energy is running out, or rather, they didn't hit as high the energy level which i think they could have. especially disappointing was the male lead, daren tan, despite being the winner of channel u's project superstar, his singing is at best, wobbly. however, the ever funny and lovable neo swee lin and irene ang, always captivate the audience with their strong acting and the pin point accuracy of the funny point in the show, were simply a class above the rest, despite being only part of the supporting casts. overall, it's was great effort from the casts, especially the ensembles, who seems to have endless number of quick changes, from scene to scene. perhaps it's due to tiredness or drain physique (due to the long run), there are some points which the actions, steps of the ensembles do not synchronize with each other, but still a job well done.

as always, the regret of watching shows in singapore is that most of the time, we pay exorbitant prices only to sit in locations which we can hardly make out who is who on stage. but at least, this is one which is worth it's ticket price, though i'm only sitting in circle 3.