presented by Singtheatre, 7 – 17 May 2008
review by Richard Lord

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Lights go up slowly and bring us to a stripped-down Parisian scene: faux-stone steps ambled up to a landing, a few metres north of a wooden park bench, an old street light, and a wrought-iron café table flanked by two wrought-iron chairs. The layout is simple but rather effective. We are at the DBS Arts Centre, but it has become possible to think that we are in a French corner of the city. Well, Singapore prides itself on its multiculturalism, does it not? One of the things I find most compelling about multiculturalism in this uniquely patchwork society is how it succeeds best when it does not try too hard. That is when it lets multicultural aspects blend together easily, naturally almost.

Case in point: the recent production by Singtheatre of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well in Paris. This production, headed by a Frenchwoman long resident in Singapore, presented by a cast made up of two local Chinese, and two ‘foreign talents’ (one an Australian, the other British). The show celebrates the songs and sensibility of Jacques Brel, himself a case study in tortured multiculturalism as a francophone Fleming growing up in Brussels and growing out in Paris. (Belgium, of which Brussels is the capital, is more of a legal fiction than a country, a society split between Dutch-speaking Flemings, or Flemish, and French-speaking Walloons. The two sides are noted for their deep-seated mutual disdain.)