re I Have A Date With Spring (musical)

Earlier this year (13-March-2010) my Mum and I attended His Majesty's Theater in Perth to see the Dama Orchestra's production of I Have A Date With Spring. It is a musical almost entirely in Cantonese; from the program "Set in the 1960's - 1980's, I HAVE A DATE WITH SPRING followed the dreams, hopes loves, trials and tribulations of four aspiring singers - Butterfly Yiu, Lulu, Nancy and Feng Ping -Whose lives became increasingly entangled while doing their singing stints at the well-known Lai Fa Palace nightclub. They became the dearest of friends. However, they had to part ways eventually, but planned to meet up for a reunion concert at the club before the building was pulled down.

Butterfly Yiu, who went on the become a celebrated singer, agreed to return to her home town, after having been away for many years, to perform at the charity convert. And everyone associated with the Lai Fa Palace did return for the reunion. Many had returned to settle unfinished business while some, like Yiu, had to come to terms with the ghosts of their pasts."

I was going to write a proper review, but to be honest, it's been a while since I saw it. My Cantonese is limited at best, and the English (and Mandarin) subtitles were placed discreetly to one side (Probably this wasn't a problem for most people attending, because the audience was about 90% Chinese, but I did see one reviewer complain about the sub titles.), but regardless of this, I understood enough that I really enjoyed this. The singers were excellent, and I learned some things I hadn't known before, like about the riots in the late 60's in KL.

I'm told some of the translations were off, like the comment "I was once a little chick, but now I am a Big Chicken!" was translated as "Once a chick now I am Rooster"

It was a little bit cheesy, in the way of all musicals, but it was very easy to get into, and the singing was excellent. The set was cleverly arranged, and the clothes were all believable.

If you ever see this playing near you, I would recommend you go see it.

PS; we were seated next to Possibly Best Behaved Children in the world. Aside from rustling their bag of peanuts a couple of times, they were perfect theatre goers. And they were roughly 3 and 5!