Sichuan - part 2

Hi guys. Here's the next Sichuan entry. Yes, I know it has been a while but I've been awfully busy, thanks for understanding. =)

Okay, after dinner on the first day of our trip to Sichuan, we were scheduled to watch a musical called Jinsha (金沙) , click here for English version. According to the Sichuan guide Xiao Xin, the musical was staged in Singapore during the Huayi Festival in Singapore. The Huayi Festival (华艺节), the Chinese Festival of Arts, is usually held in Singapore sometime during the early part of the year and is an annual event celebrating Chinese theatre, dance, music and visual arts.

I've not watch a large-scale musical in a theatre since watching Mamma Mia! at the Esplanade in 2004, I think. Xiao Xin (in case you've forgotten, he was my Sichuan guide) said that when Jinsha was staged in Singapore, ticket prices were going for about SGD100, now I'm not sure if what he said is true but from the pictures that I saw of Jinsha in the brochure, this musical looked relatively ambitious and I was looking forward to watching it.



But what I certainly was not prepared for was the theatre culture in China. Now, that's not to say that theatre culture in Singapore is great. I still remember quite clearly an article in the papers about crying babies at a SSO performance and annoying ignorant Singaporeans complaining about not being let in after they arrived late... eh... where have they been? It's been like that for decades and I still remember running like some kind of desperado to try and make it on time 20 years ago at the Victoria Theatre. Anyway, rant aside, the thing I wasn't prepared for was that some people were smoking at the back of the theatre and I had to breathe through my handkerchief for a bit. And get this, after the first half hour, you're allowed to take photos and video of the performance. I actually found the popping flashes distracting and couldn't bring myself to shoot any photos during the performance of a musical that obviously has aspirations to be the Snow Wolf Lake of Hong Kong or Forbbiden City: Portrait of an Empress of Singapore.

The musical itself was quite ambitiously put together and featured several lighting and other special effects which was pleasantly surprising considering the fact that the theatre itself wasn't in tip-top shape and when I first sat down and took a look around the place, I actually felt it was a bit on the shabby side. That said, a lot of thought and effort did go into the visual effects and even though the theatre was on the small side, they managed to create the illusion of grandeur and the sense of the epic nature of this tale.

The music isn't really that great. At least it isn't of the standard of many of the great musicals in the world and not even as memorable as Snow Wolf Lake and Forbidden City which had several powerful signature tunes that stay with you even after the performance. I must say that a lot of effort was put in but unfortunately too many of the songs sounded too similar and felt like an uncomfortable fusion of Chinese pop and Western musical styles. The music isn't terrible but just lacked a little something that's all.

Where this musical does fail is in the story. The story is at once simple yet complicated. It is simple in the sense that it is really in essence the story of a love that transcends time. It is a story of thwarted love over many reincarnated life-times. The backdrop to this love story is the discovery of the Jinsha ruins in Sichuan and the travel back in time to show the audience the lost Kingdom of Sun and how the lovers are torn apart time and again, lifetime after lifetime, till our current time in history.



Unfortunately, what should have been a simple tale of love is complicated by the far too many reincarnated lives and after a while the audience is lost. I know I wasn't the only one going "huh?" when the female character keeps dying only to reappear in some vastly different setting that didn't seem more modern than the previous. If each reincarnation had seem more modern than the previous, I think the audience would have understood that it was a different life. But because each reincarnation was set in yet another fantasy-like world, it made it hard to figure out if it was indeed another lifetime, the same lifetime or just a dream.

It also didn't help that the most interesting characters in the musical aren't the two lovers Sha and Jin. It was the Jester that I liked the best and while Fish, Jin's maid I think, was under-developed, she had an interesting relationship with the Jester and that in turn gave her character just that little bit of depth.



However, that said, the producers of this lavish musical must be applauded for Jinsha has many things going for it and is certainly a good enough production to kick-start this form of theatre in China. And while I didn't think they were entirely successful in trying to fuse Western and Chinese styles in the music, the story-telling and the costume design, yet they did manage to achieve so much that I think that Jinsha will prove to be an important piece of work in the history of modern Chinese theatre.

Jdorama - Nodame Cantabile

Cast of Nodame Cantabile

I think you can easily tell from the title that I've been bitten by the Japanese drama series bug. And although I've neglected this blog because I've been really busy with work, I just felt I needed to write about this series, so here you go... =)

Aside from HK's TVB dramas, some of the stuff made by Mediacorp Singapore and a few Mainland Chinese series, I really don't watch any other types of series made by the Asian TV industries. Even then, the last Jdorama I watched was Shomuni 1, 2 and 3 which I really enjoyed but I was never truly into Jdorama's since I wasn't able to get good recommendations to the kind of Japanese dramas I liked.

How I came upon Nodame Cantabile is actually a little unusual and makes a mildly amusing story. =) Since Elite Beat Agents on the Nintendo DS, I have been hooked on rhythm games and hunted down Ouendan 1 & 2 just so I could play them. In the process of looking for more rhythm games to play on my NDS, I came upon Nodame Cantabile. While EBA and Ouendan used songs from popular music, Nodame Cantabile differed from them because it used only classical music.

Now I really like classical music and my familiarity with it made playing Nodame Catabile the NDS game a breeze. But what made me really fall for the game was the quirky girl that kept showing up in the story parts. In this game, one takes the role of a conductor and tries to conduct a musical piece by taping or performing movements on the touch-pad with the stylus. This quirky girl didn't seem to have too much to do with the music parts but she kept showing up and even though I didn't have a clue what they were saying to each other, I pretty much figured out she lived in a messy room and made a lot of cute quirky sounds. Now it sounds silly but I for some reason, really liked her character in the game.

So just last week I was in TS video shop when I saw Nodame Cantabile the TV series being sold on DVD. I didn't even have a clue then that Nodame Cantabile was first a manga before it was made into a hit TV series, an anime series and a video game. For some strange reason, I was drawn to the series and the prospect of finding out just exactly what this quirky girl with the funny expressions story was and so I bought the series.

What I definitely didn't expect was just how wonderful this series turned out to be. The series has a cast of quirky characters that are not just for laughs but who influence each other and the story, giving this series depth and warmth. This series is heartwarming without being maudlin. The exaggerated manga/anime-ish moments are also well thought out as they aren't use merely for laughs but also to take off some of the edge of the serious moments so that the series isn't weighed down by melodrama. The background music is mostly comprised of classical music which is very well used and the music is so striking that I do consider the music to be one of the stars of this series. Many of the orchestra performances are also very nicely setup and really do bring across just how grand and moving a live performance can be.

It really helped that this series was very well cast and although Ueno Juri isn't the lead in this series, she played Noda Megumi with so much passion, energy and charm, and so perfectly that without her, I don't think Nodame Cantabile would have been superb series that it is. That's not to say that Tamaki Hiroshi who plays Chiaki Shinichi the protagonist in this series was bad. He was really good too. He was very convincing as the arrogant, very talented and at the beginning very self-absorbed music student. And Tamaki Hiroshi needed to be good because even though this series is titled Nodame Cantabile, the series isn't about Nodame (aka Noda Megumi). Although it is Nodame's love for music and life that influences Chiaki Shinichi and changes him, the story is really about him, his growth as a person and a musician and how the influences of not only Nodame but also Mine, Masumi and a hold host of other people help him to in turn influence them and others to seek out the best in themselves.


Eita as Mine Ryutaro and Mizukawa Asami as Miki Kiyora

Other notable characters and actors in this cast are Eita (plays Mine Ryutaro - violin), Koide Keisuke (Okuyama Masumi - timpani) and my personal favourite among the secondary cast, Mizukawa Asami (plays Miki Kiyora - violin). And yes, the only reason for this paragraph is because I just had to mention them. =) Truth is a lot of the supporting cast is very good, suitably cast and quite memorable.


Support cast

If you love classical music and heartwarming stories about love and friendship, then I urge you to check out Nodame Cantabile the TV series, it is that good. =)

cheers
p.s. now I'll have to hunt down the manga and the anime. =)