Date with Wild Wild Rose

I can remember vividly walking inside the Great World Amusement Park with my father holding my tiny hand. It must be in the mid-1950s, and for a five-year-old boy, the changing neon lights, the music from loudspeakers and the jostling crowd, all made my heart pound with excitement. Most mystifying to me was the cabaret or nightclub, with ladies in glittering cheongsam waiting at the front.

Even at that tender age, I knew there was something not-so-nice but attractive about the cabaret. A popular song then was

Make way, oh, make way for my Eastern Rose
Men crowd in dozens everywhere she goes
In her rickshaw on the street or in a cabaret
"Please make way for Rose" you can hear them say.

I’ve not seen a real rickshaw in my life, but my father told me the ladies of the night used to sit in their rickshaws outside the various cabarets. Men would pass by and if they liked what they saw, they would hop in with the girl, and the rickshaw coolie would then pull them to the hotel for an evening of unmitigated pleasure.

To a poor kid growing up in those years when Singapore was the fleshpot of the East, my only enjoyment was in watching movies and humming the songs about the night life entertainment scene, such as Wild Wild Rose, starring the beautiful Grace Chang (葛兰).

I’m now in my mid-50s, and to warm the cockles of my heart, a musical adaptation of the movie will be staged this January at the Victoria Theatre.

According to the press release sent to me by Jennifer Yeo at Channel 12, MediaCorp, Wild Wild Rose the Musical is adapted from the classic black and white movie, Wild Wild Rose(野玫瑰之恋), produced in 1960. The movie, directed by Wang Tian Ling (王天林), is a tale of seduction, love and betrayal. Grace Chang or Ge Lan, gives her most mesmerising performance as the singer who seduces and destroys both herself and the man she loves. She is nicely complemented by Zhang Yang (张扬) as the inexperienced piano player who falls for her.

Staying true to the original plot and featuring widely popular songs from the movie such as 卡門 (Carmen), 蝴蝶夫人 (Madame Butterfly), and 說不出的快活 , this Chinese musical is a colourful extravaganza capturing both the on-stage glamour and catching glimpses of the sorrow behind the nightclub entertainment scene.