This post was originally published on murderiseverywhere.substack.com.
Last weekend we were lucky enough to get Halloween tickets to Lucia di Lamur by The Creative Sync. Yes, it’s a retelling of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, now set in a 1950s kampung with echoes of P. Ramlee and pontianaks.
This is pre-show and most of the audience were still in the exhibition area, so please don’t judge me for taking a photo!
I really liked the kampung guitarist sitting and strumming (that’s Hunter Mah, he and his wife SY Mah are co-founders of The Creative Sync) as people walked in, especially because aunties walking in called out casual hellos and waved to him—just like you’d do in the old kampung days.
And I really liked the lyrics being projected in three languages! (sung
The show was staged at the SOTA theatre, next to the old Cathay Building, so we went to Cathay for lunch before the show.
The old Cathay Cinema and Building are part of the Singapore story; this is the Cathay where I used to watch shows (coming down the Hundred Steps) after school and I’ve used it in books and stories…
But now there’s no more cinema and the inside is totally different—
Cosplay looks like fun (didn’t photograph without permission) and I enjoyed seeing them, but I still miss the old Cathay cinema that was part of my childhood—that’s something else that’s gone and pretty much forgotten. It feels like people don’t go to cinemas any more.
But back to Lucia—I enjoyed the staging, I enjoyed seeing young people performing and I enjoyed watching other people watching. But I also found myself wondering why we’re not generating shows of our own.
Though maybe this Was kind of our own—right down to the costumes created in traditional fabric—
So yes—this bel canto style opera with a libretto based on Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 The Bride of Lammermoor (set in the late 1600s in Scotland’s Lammermuir Hills) and first staged in Naples, Italy in 1835 is now as much ‘ours’ as sarongs and pontianaks can make it.
Yes, I enjoyed it—and I have to admit I didn’t behave very well—I was getting so many ideas I was scribbling in my notebook in the dark (hence the title of this piece)—I didn’t want to get my phone out because the light would show. And maybe the best thing about any kind of a show is what it sparks in the audience and Lucia definitely sparked stuff in me.
And it made me realise that maybe our cinema days aren’t gone and forgotten… because Puccini’s Lucia di Lammermoor is even older than the movies I grew up on, but it’s still around and people are still connecting to something in it and making it their own.
On the way home we passed what used to be Rex Cinema—this and the floods around the area were landmarks of my growing up years.
I can be sad about losing the sights and scenes of my youth.
And it’s not just buildings that disappear—I just heard an old friend of mine died yesterday. While not unexpected, it’s still a shock.
I hope you’re all well—stay happy and healthy and hopeful, people!