Beauty World, which I saw successfully performed by TheatreWorks on June 5, may be the first Singaporean musical.

There have been musicals in the past that may or may not relate to the debut of Beauty World. Mostly, these are of two kinds.

The first are of largely American Broadway musicals, of which Annie Get Your Gun by ST*RS earlier in the year was an example.

The second belongs to the history of attempts to put up musicals in the Festival of Arts, of which there were two, The Samseng and the Chettiar’s Daughter, and Bumboat, in the 1982 and 1984 Festivals respectively.

Although staged by locals, both had strong foreign elements, especially in terms of directors - Australian John Tasker in Samseng, and American Tzi Ma, with Lim Siauw Chong, in Bumboat.
Neither play convinced me that we were in the presence of a truly Singaporean musical.

A Singaporean musical must be a 100 per cent local effort: in its music and songs, script, director and cast.

Beauty World has all these four - and more. I like to think that the not entirely successful attempts to stage the Singaporean musical probably produced the divine disaffection that has lead to the triumph of Beauty World.

Take the cast in all three and see the continuity. Alex and Jacintha Abisheganaden, Margaret Chan, Lok Meng Chue, Tann Yean were in Samseng; the Abishgenadens were in Bumboat; they were in Beauty World together with Chan and Lok.

There are other aspects of continuity too: Dick Lee’s music, Kalyani Kausikan’s lighting and Justin Hill’s sets for both Bumboat and Beauty World, and Michael Chiang’s script of Beauty Box (one of the plays in Bumboat).

It could be that the people who were engaged on the two previous musicals learned from their experiences and determined to work from scratch with their very own resources to give us our first musical.

But this reason, if accepted, only partically accounts for the joyous romp that Beauty World is. There are other factors.

From the opening choral number, Dick Lee transports us to the 1960s with its cha-cha rhythm reminiscent of the time when the cha-cha was the popular dance.

Choral numbers are followed by solos and duets with strong reminders of American film musicals. These not only provide occasion for singing bit heighten the melodrama.

Objection has been raised that Lee wrote ‘80s music about the ‘60s, but he has been clear about what he wants to do.

It would be unrealistic to expect him to write nostalgic ‘60s melodies in the ‘80s but what he has done is, from today’s vantage, to evolve the period two decades ago.

He gives away his intention in songs like Single in Singapore in which the singular difficulty of remaining single in Singapore, heightened by the Social Development Unit’s anxieties, finds expression in lines like "I may seem self-adjusted, strong/self-assured? Ivy, you are wrong".

Michael Chiang’s script - in his creation of scenes from black-and-white Hongkong melodrama movies, and loveable, stock characters - has the right mix of involvement and distance. Here, fun is the criterion.

Finally, Beauty World is a triumph of acting and for this much of the credit must go to director Ong Keng Sen and his cast.

There was some wavering between those who played their roles for real and those who gently mocked the characters they played, but the general effect was of uniformly excellent performances.
Mohd Najip Ali’s choreography was effective, and Tan Woon Chor’s costume details were accurate, and Justin Hill’s set appropriate.

My hope is that our first musical will lead to others and give us a succession of such efforts. Much depends on timing, on the theatre being ripe for the event. It appears we are ready for such a watchable and entertaining event as Beauty World.

[Robert Yeo has been Chairman of the Drama Advisory Committee, Ministry of Community Development, for the past 10 years. His play, One Year Back Home, was given a stage at La Mama, New York, in 1985. Another play, Second Chance, was produced in Hongkong and Singapore late last year and early this year.]