A $INGAPORE CAROL by Wild Rice

“Rockin’ Around Victoria Stage“

Reviewer: Cordelia Lee
Performance: 28 November 2018

A $ingapore Carol is Wild Rice’s glitzy, localised musical spin on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and it is everything its title alludes to.

Our Singaporean scrooge, the miserly mobile app tycoon S. K. Loo (read: Skloo), is efficiently haunted into festive generosity by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The triad — a banana tree hantu, a digital screen-travelling spirit, and the disembodied voice of an autonomous Alexa — successively drag an unwilling Loo across the fourth dimension, realigning his trajectory from a certain afterlife in hell.

The production lands unapologetically in the realm of unadulterated spectacle. From skilfully dangling a cast member mid-air for added phantasmal effect, to building an impressive digitalised columbarium with oversized touch-enabled niches, A $ingapore Carol’s mise-en-scene is consistently a glossy curation of all things larger than life.

In a similar vein, the production’s musical score largely comprises a rich amalgam of catchy tunes, choreographed dance and lyrical farce. The bigger and bolder, the better.

“A Million of Me”, for example, has the Ghost of Christmas Present (Audrey Luo) crawling out of a TV screen in a Sadako-like fashion before robotically strutting to a techno beat. A trippy video edit of her character streams in the background as Luo maintains a sharp angularity in her onstage movements. It creates an effect reminiscent of a kitschy Lady Gaga music video.

My senses are assaulted by a myriad of visually and aurally arresting stimuli. But although my eyes are glued to the stage, I’m ironically too distracted to intellectually process the song’s lyrics, let alone emotionally engage with it on a deeper level.

Granted, most of the original numbers are energetic showstoppers that easily rev up the crowd. Yet, the same elements that mesmerise can also occlude. And this becomes evident as the excessive dynamism and extravagance in some numbers begin to overshadow their intended message.

As a result, I float through the two hours, consuming entertaining spectacle after spectacle without much critical thought.

“Bunga Pisang”, the hauntingly poignant song by the Ghost of Christmas Past (Siti Khalijah), is perhaps the only musical number that is distinctly affective. Hints of traditional Malay music are heard in the soothing underlying instrumentals of the piece, beautifully complementing the 1950s kampong setting that the song is performed in. It serves as a brilliant back-drop for Loo (Sebastian Tan) as he watches his younger self grapple with heartbreak and lost opportunity. An effective dramatic element that develops Loo’s character further and advances the narrative, “Bunga Pisang” is what I hoped the rest of songs would be like.

But alas, it remained a one hit wonder.

Much like an orh luak-nog or a satay turkey stuffed with ketupat, A $ingapore Carol is all in all a delightful modernised Asian fusion of a Western classic. While its overt theatricality and Singlish puns might leave you feeling a little jelak, this lively yuletide production will appeal to your inner child and keep you in your seat.

Just be sure to expect loads of jaunty entertainment, and little else.