In what could be described as a cooking-babi-pongteh-using-fish moment, the predominantly Filipino cast performing in Singapura: The Musical have failed to impress with their standard of Singlish besides many other things, as judged by Corrie Tan, in a review for The Straits Times on May 23, 2015.

From ST:

But what was perhaps the most jarring was Singapura's predominantly Filipino cast poorly mimicking the complex creole of Singlish with the token "lah". This was, at its best, problematic and at its worst, in poor taste. An audience can smell token authenticity from a mile away, and while I recognise the enormous effort to sound vaguely Singaporean, the result is so distracting I would rather have listened to their original accents instead, or even General American, which should be in the repertoire of most trained actors. It would have been the more honest attempt.

A production about Singapore's rocky road to independence set in the period of the 1950s and 1960s, the musical is by 4th Wall Theatre Company's composer-creator Ed Gatchalian and scriptwriter Joel Trinidad, both from the Philippines, as well as American director Greg Ganakas.

The production cast is composed of 35 Filipinos, 11 Singaporeans, an American and a Canadian.

The non-local production team was thought to have been able to bring something else to the table "with some distance from the weight of our history" (in the words of the ST reviewer), since the expectation is that the entire Singapore enterprise is ossified in our remembering and when it comes to thinking about the facts of our past.

But, alas, no.

The musical ended up bludgeoning the audience in the face with everything: Political rhetoric, sloganeering, platitudes, paper-thin characters, narrated stories and even kitschy documentary photography that was out of place.

From ST again:

Singapura just cannot decide what Singapore story it wants to tell. Does it want to be a sweeping historical epic, slathering on the facts and numbers and squeezing in every historical checkpoint it can manage? Does it want to be the story of an ordinary Singaporean family, struggling to make ends meet? Or does it want to be a love story between a Singaporean girl and a British soldier? Or perhaps it wants to be Lee Kuan Yew's story, the way an obliquely named "Man In White" drifts across the stage?

[...]

Singapura took the very specific and made it even more obscure, piling on the facts so thick and heavy it felt like a secondary school history lesson forced into the structure of a musical.

The musical is rarely a genre of nuance. It is a genre of spectacle, of catchy tunes, of brash demonstrations of love and choruses that can bear repeated singing. To attempt to shoehorn dense paragraphs of political reasoning or complex racial politics into a musical makes it look like a retelling of Singapore history Punch and Judy style - hitting the audience over the head with over-simplified slogans and platitudes until it physically hurts.

However, it is not as if the musical's creators were not aware of the risk of foreigners interpreting the Singapore story.

From ST, Jan. 24, 2015:

There has been criticism from certain quarters in Singapore on why Filipinos were producing and performing in a play about their history. Mr Gatchalian, however, says many of these critics are won over after hearing the music and learning the story.

Mr Trinidad echoes: "Singaporean consultants who had said that this-people from other country doing a musical on their history-could never happen take a look at the script and love it. Sometimes, you may need an outsider to show you the story to tell it more clearly. If you are too close to it, you might not be too objective."

At the same time, he acknowledges his "biggest challenge-to make the Singaporeans own this musical. Make this story theirs".

"I wrote it in such a way that when a Singaporean sees this, he'll say, 'This is me.'"

Well, good try but guess it didn't work.

Top photo via Singapura: The Musical

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