New musical imagines Lee Kuan Yew and Kwa Geok Choo’s romance through poetry, xinyao

SINGAPORE – Founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew famously called poetry “a luxury we cannot afford” in public. But, every night of his wife Kwa Geok Choo’s final two years, when she was sick and bedridden, he read her favourite poems to her.

While shows like The LKY Musical (2015)

have dramatised the late Mr Lee’s public and political life

, a new Mandarin musical peers behind the curtains to speculate on the private romance of Mr and Mrs Lee through a great deal of extrapolation and imagination.

Toy Factory Productions’ Moonlit City plays at Gateway Theatre from July 25 to Aug 3. It is directed by Goh Boon Teck, who felt there were more intimate and emotional stories of the couple to explore after he directed Toy Factory’s play Kwa Geok Choo in 2022.

Debut playwright Jedidiah Huang, 30, who is also a spoken word poet, says of his script: “While no one can ever claim to know their true thoughts or actions behind closed doors, I tried my best to piece together their psyches based on a collection of different sources.”

Thus, while the public might never know the poems shared between Mr Lee and Madam Kwa, Huang has opted for poems by the likes of metaphysical poet John Donne and the American poet Sara Teasdale. Since the couple got married secretly at William Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1947, the Bard, too, is a reasonable guess.

Iconic songs by xinyao veteran Tan Kah Beng will also suffuse the love story with another layer of lyricism, with songs like Moonlight In The City, The Sun After The Rain and Midnight Arrival featuring in the musical.

Actor Timothy Wan, 37, who plays Mr Lee in the musical, says of the song choices: “It really pumps up the emotional and vulnerable moments – those songs tug at the heartstrings because sentimentality is characteristic of Mandarin pop.”

Wan, who had played Barisan Sosialis leader Fong Swee Suan in The LKY Musical, says this new Mandarin musical will focus more on the conversations between the couple.

He adds: “In some strange sense, I think the two of them are really a blueprint for maintaining a successful long-term relationship. There must have been so many disagreements – we’ll never know – but there was so much compromise, giving in to and supporting each other.”

The play imagines a confrontation, for example, around Mr Lee’s decision to drop women – including Madam Kwa – from the early People’s Action Party meetings in their Oxley Road home. From 1970 to 1984, there were no women in Parliament.

Wan, who has read Mr Lee’s memoirs and watched Madam Kwa’s speeches with his co-lead Sunny Yang in preparation for their roles, speculates: “If he had not done that, Kwa Geok Choo might have become one of the big figures in Singapore politics.”

Yang, 34, who plays Madam Kwa, is looking to emulate the good humour and maturity of the woman who advocated for women’s rights and was an accomplished lawyer in her own right.

Yang says: “From the outside, people always assume they were a perfect couple helping and supporting each other. But, for me, being able to see the scars of their marriage and imperfections can be very touching too.”

The young actors shrug when asked if previous portrayals of the couple by bigwig actors like Adrian Pang, Sharon Au and Kit Chan stress them out.

Wan says: “The role itself is a big responsibility – it’s not so much that it has to be like somebody else’s portrayal. You want to feel that you’re doing justice to their story.”

The story, which spans the couple’s days as students in Raffles College up to their deaths, will also explore the change in their relationship over the years.

Of that, Wan says: “By the end, I think we see that there are a lot of things he feels like he could not have done without her.”

Book It/Moonlit City

Where: Gateway Theatre, 3615 Jalan Bukit Merah
When: July 25 to Aug 3; 2.30 and 7.30pm (Thursdays to Saturdays); 2.30pm (Wednesdays and Sundays)
Admission: $48 to $98
Info:

sistic.com.sg/events/moonlit0825