SOUVENIR by Sing’theatre

“Souvenir“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 22 September 2018

Souvenir tells the story of an unlikely diva, based on a real-life personality – Florence Foster Jenkins – whose fame derives from her apparent inability to sing in tune. Before this production by Sing’theatre, I had only known of the 2016 movie, Florence Foster Jenkins, starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant. The movie is compelling largely due to the portrayal of the touching yet complicated relationship between Jenkins (Streep) and her husband (Grant). Souvenir by playwright Stephen Temperley, on the other hand, is centred on Jenkins and her accompanist, Cosme McMoon.

While the impressions of Jenkins’ character conveyed by both the movie and this play are similar, having the story told through McMoon’s eyes in Souvenir gives things a slightly different perspective. It zooms out from the focus on Jenkins, her motives and her unique personality. This play’s strength is in its presentation of a non-romantic relationship that is complex, intriguing, and opens up difficult questions – about friendship, loyalty, ethics and so on.

A two-character full-length play is always demanding on the performers, and with this play there are added challenges: the actor playing McMoon has to be able to play the piano (well); and the actor playing Jenkins must be able to sing (badly). Hossan Leong and Leigh McDonald, in the respective roles, do step up to these challenges admirably on the whole.

McDonald’s experience in musical theatre (having performed on the West End and in several Singaporean musical productions) is apparent in her overall carriage. She convincingly conveys both Jenkins’ earnestness and innocence as a person, as well as her kitschy over-the-top performances during her recitals. A downside to McDonald’s performance, however, is that she is not entirely believable towards the end as an ailing 60-year-old.

Nevertheless, her deliberate, consistently out-of-tune vocal performances do warrant particular mention. And while the use of slapstick humour as a device gets tiresome as a after a while, it is impressive that McDonald carries the performance through with such commitment. This is especially apparent in Act 2, which dramatises Jenkins’ Carnegie Hall performance with a series of arias, which McDonald performs splendidly “badly”.

Leong’s performance is somewhat less secure overall, with a Singaporean accent sometimes slipping in amidst his New York accent. At points the comic timing can also be more precise. But the stories of both McMoon and Jenkins are not all fun and joy. In fact it is quite the opposite, where much of the humour in the play actually veils darker, crueller ironies in the characters’ lives. More sensitivity to these aspects would make the performance more nuanced.

To what extent do talent and aesthetic standards matter in a performance? In a somewhat convenient, but perhaps necessary, ending, the lights go down on McDonald performing an “ideal” (in-tune) rendition of Gounod’s “Ave Maria”, as I am left pondering the dichotomy between passion and good intentions on the one hand, and talent and aesthetic “quality” on the other.