Singled out by The Straits Times as one of 30 rising stars under 30, Joel Tan made his playwriting debut with W!LD RICE on Family Outing in 2011. After revamping Jack & The Bean-Sprout! in 2013, Joel returns with a brand-new pantomime for this holiday season. He fills in the blanks on The Emperor’s New Clothes, his very stylo-mylo adaptation of a fairy tale that still rings true in Singapore today.
The Emperor’s New Clothes came about when… Ivan invited me back to Panto-land. He came to me with the idea of adapting The Emperor’s New Clothes into a pantomime, and I thought there was no better way of approaching W!LD RICE’s trademark year-end blend of fairy tale and political satire. Also because, as the past few years have shaped up in Singapore, there’s a lot of natural fodder for a show like this.
Those who remember the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale… Won’t need spoiler alerts! But I think they’ll rediscover how brilliant this story is as a parable for all struggles against power gone awry. There are all the familiar elements of the story – a vain, and in this rendition, mildly despotic, Emperor; a gaggle of sycophantic, and in this rendition, also intensely inept, civil servants; ambitious and mischievous but good-hearted tailors; and a village of people who are very easily swayed. I’ve had to do very little to actually Singaporeanise it.
For this pantomime, I found it unexpectedly challenging to… Keep it light-hearted. I’ve been told the script is quite “dark”. But hey, we’re writing the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes in Singapore in 2015, and Singapore in 2015 hasn’t always given us a lot to laugh about. So I’ve had to find humour in the absurd, in the grotesque, in the gnarly and unpleasant and over-the-top and bizarre – in the things that would otherwise be very upsetting in real life, away from the glitz and sparkle of the stage. The greatest reprieve has been the songs, which are soaring and alternately ironic and candy-sweet.
Anyone who works with Pam Oei must… Be on their A-game, ’cause she always is! The good thing about Pam is that she’s had a lot of experience coming up with material that really gets to Singaporeans and tickles their funny bones, and she’s been a great check to my morbid and morose disposition (see above). She has a real sense of the delightful and of what works in comedy and what doesn’t. She’s also a very hard worker and has kept me on my toes when I would otherwise want to slouch in a corner!
The music composed by Julian Wong… couldn’t be more dreamy! What a talent. The score has a distinct musical-theatre feel to it. The songs are not as poppy as in past scores, and they all really work with the lyrics to deliver an idea, emotion or story. That’s my greatest joy, because I think songs tend to get glossed over as pretty show-stoppers and dance numbers but, the way I write songs, they carry the story forward, deepen characters and even create stage action. And Julian’s score, which is filled with recurring motifs and themes, really gets to the heart of that style. There’s a lot of rich instrumentation and, of course, all the actors are playing music live on stage, so the music takes on a lot of different meanings: it stands for delight, joy and freedom, but it also threads the whole show together. And you’ll want to listen to Julian’s music; it’s lush and stirring and energetic.
My biggest fashion faux pas would… Be for someone else to judge. I’ve already appeared on a tumblr called ‘WTF Are You Wearing’!
Writing two pantomimes for W!LD RICE has taught me… Writerly economy.
You should watch The Emperor’s New Clothes because… It’s gonna be a ridiculous close to this ridiculous year. I like to think of it as the LKY musical that never made it! It’s a way, I suppose, of gesturing to how the one thing we haven’t done very well this Jubilee Year is laugh at ourselves: we’ve had savage nostalgia, soul-wrenching political storytelling and celebration, but not had a good laugh. I hope the show offers an opportunity for that, and different kinds of laughter too – belly laughs, chuckles, resigned laughs, bitter laughter, hoots and scoffs and screeching, mocking laughter!
