Perry is wild in love and in songs

What a way to start 2009, with wine, women and songs, but mostly songs. So on an overcast New Year Day afternoon, my wife and I found ourselves seated on the first row in Victoria Theatre watching an unlikely love story in the raucous nightclub scenes of the 1960s.

Perry Chiu (焦媛) from Hong Kong, puts in a typhoon performance as the main singer in Wild Wild Rose the Musical (野玫瑰之戀), belting out song after song set in the twilight, smokey world where love and relationship flow as smoothly and as uncertain as alcohol, dance hostesses and back scene hoods.

In contrast, Thomas Ong (王沺裁), one-time Singapore small screen actor, is somewhat wooden as the stage pianist and Perry’s lover. In an unexpected quiet moment, he inserts his voice into the play, singing, “People tell me, you’re prettier than the peach blossom…”

I first heard this tuneful peach blossom ditty more than 30 years ago, and it has been one of a half-dozen sentimental songs playing on-and-off in my head since! I’ve always thought that underneath the lyrics is a longing to meet the lover to bed her.

But Thomas’s singing seems flat and unmotivated. He wants to make love, but there is simply no force of desire in his voice or gesture.

Listening to Perry singing the many popular songs from the movie such as 卡門 (Carmen), 蝴蝶夫人 (Madame Butterfly), and 說不出的快活 (Shuo bu chu de kuai huo), reminds me of those days strolling in the Shaw Amusement Parks with my father holding my tiny hand. It must be in the mid-1950s, and inside each park there would be a cabaret, where ladies in glittering cheongsam clustered at the neon-lit entrance.

Even as a child, I knew there was something not-so-nice but very alluring about the cabaret.

The musical performance is based on an actual 1960 black-and-white movie of the same name, starring the sweet singer, Ge Lan or Grace Chang (葛兰). Ge Lan gives a mesmerising performance as the singer who seduces and destroys both herself and the man she loves. She is complemented by Zhang Yang (张扬) as the inexperienced piano player who falls for her.

Life is to be lived, with energy, music and passionate love-making, Wild Wild Rose tells us. Reach out and grab it when you can, before your eyes dim and your voice croaks in old age.

Wild Wild Rose reminds me of the poem by Ernest Dowson:

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incobare Longam
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter
Love and desire and hate
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

The title simply means in Latin: "The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long."