Moonlit City too generic a retelling of Lee couple's romance

The xinyao musical that follows Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Madam Kwa Geok Choo's love story over seven decades has odd pacing and lacks consistency

- Clement Yong

THEATRE MOONLIT CITY Toy Factory Productions Gateway Theatre July 26

This seven-decade-spanning, schmaltzy interpretation of the romance between Singapore's first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and his wife Kwa Geok Choo treads the familiar ground of a well-known story.

The Chinese musical's greatest invention is perhaps also its most obvious shortcoming: that heart-tugging xinyao songs like Moonlight In The City and The Sun After The Rain, which it has tried to incorporate into the plot, cannot be deployed willy-nilly to short-circuit catharsis.

The tunes remain as sweet as ever, but are ultimately independent crowd-pleasers; the lament of Moonlight In The City as a particularly significant thematic piece of music for the Lee couple never feels specific enough to their circumstances to warrant any kind of emotional climax.

Directed by Toy Factory Productions' chief artistic director Goh Boon Teck,