Oh boy, I
sure loved this show. As a farce. I laughed and hooted when the tragic
male lead drew his revolver and shot his beloved heroine.
This isn't completely the fault of New Voice Company. In Aspects
of Love, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber has created a story that's difficult
for anyone to take seriously. It's a musical about decadent early 20th
century European aristocrats and chanteuses sleeping with each other
in every possible combination, then feeling bad about it later. As its
scenes flip from decade to decade, you can't even stay in the same era
long enough to start feeling sexy.
The famous ballad and motif of the musical, Love Changes Everything,
comes at the beginning. And it's a lovely song, perfect in its simplicity
and testimony to the power of love. But there's a reason we tend to
hear of that song alone: it's immediately betrayed by the discordant
recitative that follows in the scenes afterward, and few of the show's
other songs even approach its memorability.
It's also a sad fact that this song served as a prelude to the inadequacy
of the cast and direction. Our hero Alex, played by Jake Macapagal,
was obviously strained as he reached the higher notes in the closing
verses. Rose Vibert, played by leading lady Monique Wilson, just didn't
have the stage presence to distinguish her from the chorus. There was
a general problem of low energy acting throughout the cast - and don't
give me the excuse that it was a weekday performance to a half-filled
auditorium; if you don't give your best every day, then you're cheating
the audience.
I'm sympathetic to the difficulties of a Manila company doing performance
in Singapore. New Voice Company apparently did a rather good job of
The Vagina
Monologues here not too long ago. But if you're doing a musical,
you've got to be aware that standards are pretty damn high here - our
first encounters were with big West End productions from London and
Australia. It's consequently pretty tough for the company to win us
over without elaborate sets, sparkly costumes, massive synchronised
dance or an orchestra - just a plinky-plonk piano that sounded awful
on the sound system (though that may be due to technical difficulties
on our side). It's got the unfortunate effect of making Aspects
resemble a JC musical.
In her capacity as director, Wilson further fails to adapt the intimate
effects of a black box musical to a proscenium stage. The characters
appear indistinct and unbelievable in their acts of passion - and believe
me, Webber is demanding a lot of a cast when he's drawing up characters
like spoilt 17 year-old nobleman Alex and his super-rich old uncle George
who sleeps and drinks with everyone and anything in sight. Aside from
the opener, the best song of this first act was the witty She'd
Be Far Better Off With You, invigorated by its clever banter rather
than any deep emotional acting.
I'm probably being too harsh on this show, which really had a fraction
over two stars' worth of entertainment value. After all, it did stagger
to life by the end of act one, with the big lesbian kiss between Giulietta
Trapani and Rose, who cleanly avoid the traditional dynamic of warring
mistresses by forming a merriest ménage à trois with the
ageing George. With the mood of polyamory rather than romantic idealism
in place, it becomes easier in act two to accept the follies of the
characters, whose relationships are less accurately described as love
triangles than as cat's cradles. Actors are more warmed up and the locations
of scenes vary less, creating a less disruptive dramatic sequence to
tell of events over the next few decades. Jenny Jamora should also be
congratulated for delivering the best song of this act, a truly spirited
and passionate performance of Hand Me the Wine and the Dice.
Nonetheless, something's been irrevocably lost in terms of empathy
- when Alex starts getting hot for his 15 year-old cousin, the daughter
of his uncle and his former love Rose, my first thought was, "How screwed
up can this get?" but Alex's infatuation was followed by a contemplative
meditation on the place of incest and pedophilia in a lexicon of love.
One might be wowed at Sir Andrew for daring to raise such questions
in a West End show. Privately, I think it just makes the title of the
musical more inaccurate. Aspects of Love? Aspects of Poorly
Governed and Sublimated Hormones, more like. Or, as stated above,
Who's Screwing Who?* It's also conveniently illustrative of
my question of whether New Voice Theatre has wronged Webber or Webber
has wronged New Voice.
But one thing becomes clear when you look at the price tags on these
tickets. $78 to $98 for weekday shows???? $83 to $103 for weekends????
With these dodgy, uneven standards of theatre, the guys getting screwed
the most are the audience.
*Ng Yi-Sheng is aware that grammatically, the title of this article
should be Who's Screwing Whom. He is also aware that
he sounds too much like a prat already.
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"Oh boy, I sure loved this show. As a farce. I laughed and hooted
when the tragic male lead shot his beloved heroine."
Credits
Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics: Don Black & Charles Hart
Book: David Garnett
Director: Monique Wilson
Cast: Monique Wilson, Jake Macapagal, Leo Rialp, Jenny Jamora, Nikki
Ventosa, Rito Asilo, Julia Abueva, Nelson Caruncho, Lily Chu, Mika Margolles,
Amiel Mendoza, Dandy Ramos, Gina Samson, Rona Lou San Pedro, Gabbi Buencamino
and Topper Fabregas.
Previous Productions by The New Voice Company
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