Concert review: Intense reflection and melancholy in The Heart Of Jun

The Heart of Jun: Memoirs of Zhaojun

Siong Leng Musical Association
Singtel Waterfront Theatre
Feb 14, 8pm

Nanyin, or music of the south, is the music of Southern China, centred on the province of Fujian (Hokkien), which was transported to the lands of South-east Asia during the Chinese diaspora.

A 2,000-year-old tradition, its designation as a “living fossil” is a double-edged sword, emphasising its antiquity but also embodying the risk of becoming an immobile museum piece. 

Much credit thus goes to Singapore’s Siong Leng Musical Association for contextualising its seemingly simple content with this elegant piece of musical theatre at the Esplanade’s Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts. 

This collaboration with playwright Katherine Chou and director Lee Yi Hsiu, both from Taiwan, yielded true dividends.

Its plot revolved around the ballads of Wang Zhaojun, one of ancient China’s four classical beauties, who was married off by the Western Han emperor to a Xiongnu king. Undertaking a perilous journey of uncertainty, her songs were essentially laments on loss, sacrifice and homesickness. 

These were beautifully personified in the soulful voice of Lim Ming Yi, playing Azhao, a tragic character in traditional outfit who appeared distant and aloof to the chatty but diverse personalities of a modern-attired Yi Xin (Ang Xiao Ting) and the kebaya-clad Nan Jun (Jodi Chan). All three women, with their own aspirations and agencies, were united on a sea voyage from Fujian to Nanyang.   

In its three connected scenes, beginning with The Wind Blows Through Yanmen Pass, Azhao’s mellifluous songs in the Minnan dialect were accompanied by pipa (played by Seow Ming Fong), sanxian (Anita Yeong), erxian (Joel Chia) and dongxiao (bamboo flute, Seow Ming Xian).

With a backup ensemble of eight musicians, this set a dominant tone of melancholy and intense reflection. 

For the second scene, Family Letters Amid The Rhythm of Drums, and the finale, The Treacherous Sea Outmatches Rugged Mountains, the same lament was reprised, yet sounding different on each occasion.

It was as if transformations had taken place with a change of scenarios and fortunes, with the singing and instrumentations varied accordingly.

The cognitive incongruences among the three protagonists soon become apparent, with the sudden and repeated appearance of the play’s only male character Jian Huang (Hang Qian Chou). He was a bearer of impending doom, whether by a gale-force typhoon or blood-thirsty pirates, who shattered their illusions. Where did he come from and why the urgent messages?

In the third act, they – and the audience – soon realised they were being trapped in an eternal space and time warp, where every character was part of a ghost story.

The plot twist came at just the right time, as the vessel was being dredged from the sea floor, prompting an audible gasp from the audience.

When asked what pursuit one character would undertake after the “rescue”, her reply was to “perform Nanyin”.

Thus an allegorical parallel may be inferred with the art of Nanyin being revived from the dregs of history by the implausibly young practitioners from Siong Leng. This production should be repeated, if anything, to recapture its artistry and all the nuances.