Disclosure: I worked on the musical featured in this review, specifically composing some songs for the musical. I have also worked with the scriptwriter of this musical multiple times in different occasions, and learnt a lot from those experiences. This article is purely a personal opinion on the content of the musical itself from the perspective of an audience member, and not a personal attack towards any individual. I respect and appreciate the effort and hard work behind everyone involved in the making of this musical and hope for improvements in future iterations of RHMP.

This musical gives me mixed feelings, pretty similar to how Hbomberguy felt after watching the web series RWBY.

The execution of the cast’s acting and singing, as well as the quality of the music, is significantly better than the iteration of RHMP last year (Oil). Not only was the music performed with minimal mistakes, the songs and background music (BGMs) featured in the musical integrate well with the story and are coherent as a whole. Yes, even the unusual-sounding Limbo that features dissonant harmony and irregular time signatures, which accompanies the otherworldly part of the show.

The structure of this musical is creative: it explores the concept of diverging storylines and offers the live audience a choice that decides how the story develops after the intermission. However, the execution of this structure is limited by practical reasons such as time constraints and logistics. One may expect this idea to be presented in an improvised manner, but this is actually not the case. Rather, the choices are binary and predetermined. With that said, as an audience engagement technique, it is a clever one.

After watching the musical, I was initially puzzled by the overall direction of the plot, especially how the characters’ dynamics and interactions develop. Many questions were raised within my mind, such as, “What is the ’taxi driver’ doing here?”, “Why is the main character acting so indecisively? Is he even serious about his aspirations?” and “What is the significance of the buddy character in the main character’s development?”¹

However, after spending some time digesting the plot of the musical, I still struggled to find any thought-provoking message or social commentary within the story. Although the philosophical topic of life choices is the main theme of the musical, I find it a shame that the jokes that are mostly irrelevant to the central plot of the story seem to have overshadowed the core concept itself.

When I first heard about the synopsis of the musical and that the musical would be piano-themed, I expected it to explore real-life struggles that aspiring musicians nowadays face in establishing a professional career due to the increasingly competitive environment and saturated job market, as well as information overload in this online era where lots of people are vying for the limited amount of attention available. Alternatively, I was also looking forward to an emotional story about a teenager with a pianist dream who manages to overcome his unique personal hardships and grow as a person, akin to the plot of the manga Your Lie in April.

Instead, what I actually got was just yet another slice-of-life story about a young man called Asher with an aspiration that does not align well with the expectations from people around him, and faces difficulty in juggling between chasing his dream and paying attention to the loved ones around him. This genre by itself is not problematic, but in the context of Singaporean student musicals, it is an increasingly overused trope. We should explore other potentially interesting settings instead of churning out yet another portrayal of a stereotypical Chinese Singaporean nuclear family. In this regard, the production in the previous year (Oil) has put a more commendable effort.

The messages it conveys, which is that while chasing our own dreams, we shouldn’t forget about the loved ones who are equally important, is wholesome, but again, pretty cliché. Nevertheless, it’s still presented decently, especially the inclusion of the mysterious ‘taxi driver’ character, who acts as a ‘life advisor’ to the protagonist, that makes the story more eye-catching, though it takes time to understand the purpose of this character.

In addition, there are sudden plot twists in this show, from which I expected dramatic changes in the characters’ personality. However, this expectation was not fulfilled. The characters are written in a logically consistent manner, but they are rather one-dimensional. Iris, a side character who is the main character’s girlfriend, is a character with a typical bossy, tsundere archetype. Murphy, another side character acting as the main character’s buddy, is also just an archetypal joker character. Beyond that, their relationships with the main character are not explored in-depth throughout the show (other than the one song that expresses their admiration for the main character).

Although there are changes in some characters’ attitudes, the change is so expectable that even though it technically is character development, it is hardly considered captivating. For example, Mr. Li, who is the protagonist’s father, is just yet another example of a stereotypical Asian parent character, a borderline cliché trope. The only character development we see in him is his change in attitude towards another side character Bernadette, the protagonist’s childhood friend and an established pianist, from hostility to guilt due to a misunderstanding. It’s a happy-ending development, but it’s an expected one. The same applies for Asher’s change in attitude towards the end of the show.

Some of the characters may possibly even exhibit out-of-character behaviours. For instance, Mr. Li referenced, though without directly mentioning, something that may raise some people’s eyebrows and one hardly expects to come from a stereotypical Asian elderly when complaining about his son’s career choices. Iris and Murphy, who are not established to be well-versed in music, are somehow able to recite the full title of a classical piano piece at some point. Although one can justify that this is because they have heard the main character doing the same thing so many times that even they can memorise it, it still feels so out of nowhere that such explanation sounds rather far-fetched.

On that note, the protagonist also recited the full title of a piano piece as a running joke in the show, in addition to rushing around for piano practices in the show, and unfortunately, these are the only musically inclined traits we see from him. Other than these behaviours, the main character hardly shows any more realistic or relatable trait of a piano enthusiast character. Besides Your Lie in April mentioned previously, other great piano-themed stories such as Forest of Piano and Nodame Cantabile could have served as sources of inspiration. We could have seen him passionately sharing the history and compositional techniques behind a piano piece, or practising the piano tirelessly in the way actual piano learners would do: scribbling the score, playing a section at a slower tempo with a metronome, and so on. Sadly, these are absent in the show, making the characterisation underwhelming, lack depth and provide limited engagement.

As for the dialogue, they are overall decent. The jokes scattered throughout are mostly funny, if you understand the context. While there are some jokes that acknowledge and make fun of the ridiculousness of the development of some parts of the plot or certain choices made by the main character, which makes a potential plot hole not quite a plot hole, as well as meta jokes that reference plot devices themselves, such as ‘plot armour’ and ‘breaking the fourth wall’, some other jokes to me feel too niche: they are either RHMP-specific in-jokes (e.g. one that references, again, Oil, the production last year), or Singaporean-specific (e.g. one that references an old news report about a hail storm in Singapore). Understandably, the primary target audience of the show is almost entirely Singaporean, so perhaps it makes practical sense for the jokes to be more localised, though it is still quite a shame that there are not as many jokes that resonate internationally and are relevant to the central plot of the show.

Treating this show as a typical life-oriented musical, there are still parts that deserve some credit. The flashback scene, accompanied with a well-structured BGM, is a good direct portrayal of the main character’s inner thoughts. The plot twist that brings the main character to a near-death situation and thus leads to that flashback scene is also fairly noticeably foreshadowed, so it’s not particularly confusing.

However, the subplots within the show, such as one that involves Mr. Li’s misdirected hate towards Bernadette due to a stupid move made by Asher (which, to be fair, the show acknowledges), one that involves Iris and Murphy talking (and singing) about how much they care about the main character, and one that features Iris’s younger sister’s graduation, do not seem to integrate well with the main plot. In fact, they seem to distract the central plot and look like merely fillers. Nonetheless, they are still decent to watch in isolation.

In summary, this musical is a fun watch, but it’s also a wasted potential as its piano-themed premise could’ve been an opportunity to explore questions that resonate better with pianists or musicians in general, which is sadly absent in the actual show, thereby reducing the piano theme to a replaceable plot device.

Here are some of my personal suggestions that hopefully can improve this show:-

• Provide a clearer exposition of each character’s background. For example, make the main character’s girlfriend select, play and explain about the CD recording of a classical music by a specific orchestra to demonstrate her understanding and interest of classical music.
• Feature plots that allude to real-life struggles of present-day musicians. For example, we could introduce a competition judge character that only cares about the music schools that the protagonist has attended or is unfairly judgemental towards the protagonist’s piano piece choice to bring about the issue of musical elitism.
• Dedicate more show time for and put more focus into the central plot instead of introducing too many subplots that distract the main theme.
• Minimise the number of narratively irrelevant jokes. Jokes should aim to be witty, in-character and align to the main premise.
• Explore other forms of characterisations. For example, the protagonist’s father could be a locally well-known jazz pianist instead of just a stereotypical Asian parent.
• Introduce more substantive challenges to make the character developments more impactful. For example, the protagonist could lose a piano competition that could secure his enrolment into his dream world-class conservatory, say, Julliard School, and has to find ways to deal with this devastation and reignite his passion through a new motivation, say, playing music for those with special needs.
• Make piano-related events such as piano competitions or piano masterclasses a major scene of the show, and portray them with greater detail.