It might sound a little complex, converting a play into a movie and then a television show before bringing it to Australia as a multi-lingual musical… complete with subtitles. But such is the premise of Dama Orchestra’s I Have A Date With Spring, a work which spans three decades of love in a Shanghai nightclub.
It’s the music that makes Dama Orchestra so unique. They are renowned as ambassadors of Malaysian and Oriental music across the globe having won awards at festivals in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and Shanghai. I Have A Date With Spring sees Dama return to Perth in spectacular fashion.
‘Dama’s forte is really music,’ explained artistic director Pun Kai Loon. ‘The excellent part of our work lies in the fact that we plant Western harmonies and Oriental harmonies together because of the instruments that we use, Western and Chinese instruments and we mix them. Therefore the sound that we create from Dama is very distinctively Dama.
‘Sometimes it makes us work hard. We can stick to Oriental sound or Western sound quite easily and if you want to tread in the middle path you also can tread that middle path.’
The show deals with the friendships of four cabaret singers, four women who dream of fame and fortune. Only one of these women, Butterfly (played by Tan Soo Saun), achieves this dream but in the process has to sacrifice the love of her life, Karl (played by Steve Yap). What results is a tale which spans three decades from the start of ’60s to the end of the ’80s and includes a slightly ambiguous character in the form of Nancy.
Of course, such a broad history meant that Pun and his partner in crime, musical director Khor Seng Chew, had to literally sift through songs from each decade to find those that would suit the show.
‘We had to get a song from that period that again is not going to interrupt the flow of the story,’ explained Khor. ‘Luckily, I think I had almost all – I would say if not all, I think I would say 90 percent of the collections – of songs from that period.
‘So there’s thousands of songs I had to screen through, not only screening through to get the melody of the songs right, but to make sure that the lyrics actually fit into the flow of the story, not stopping the development of the story, that is actually very, very time consuming and very tedious.’
But it’s a labour of love that has paid off spectacularly. What adds to this production is that the entire show is in Cantonese with English and Mandarin subtitles. Epic? Very. But it also highlights the importance of music to a body like Dama Orchestra.
‘It’s an important part of our entertainment because songs can sell, very much like Indian cinema these days,’ Khor said of the process of choosing “the right songs†for this show. ‘Songs can sell, so in that sense, a lot of producers actually use songs, whether it’s relevant or not relevant. Good songs, especially, have to be part of the marketing, promotional drive, so in that sense, if you take off the songs, it doesn’t change, you don’t miss out on the plot or storytelling.
‘That was what we, for a long time, understand our own Chinese musicals to be like that, so in that sense, we have actually tried to incorporate the Western concept of musical into this stage play. That’s the difference it makes in this production.’
Amid all the Canto-pop however are some true classics, songs that people will instantly recognise irrespective of whatever language they are sung in. And there’s the fact that most of the music used within has a historical context too, a history which unfolds throughout the two and a half hour production.
‘It’s kind of a really big story for myself,’ concluded Pun, ‘and a personal journey in some sense and these songs, it reached familiarity to me in terms of being nostalgic; sometimes I remember recalling my father humming those songs. So it has that nostalgic attachment to it, so in some sense when people come to see this show we are also documenting the period songs of the different decades. So (the audience will hear) songs developing over that decade.’
I Have A Date With Spring – The Musical will appear at His Majesty’s Theatre from March 12 to March 13 for three shows only. Tickets are available now through www.bocsticketing.com.au with more information on Dama Orchestra available at www.damaorchestra.com
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
