Fringe Club Studio Wednesday 3-Saturday 6

It’s early February, and you’re sitting inside the Fringe Studio, watching what has been described to you as a ‘musical theatre’ piece. There is no dialogue, no dance numbers, no fanciful costumes, and next to no props. If there also isn’t a discernible narrative on hand to guide you through the 18 standalone songs gloriously performed before your eyes, chances are you’re watching Songs for a New World.

“It’s not a gig,” director Bethan Greaves says of her new adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s Tony Award-winning abstract musical, presented here as part of the City Festival. “But it has no overarching storyline – at all. You could come in and go, ‘That was lovely; I’ve been entertained by a lot of short stories.’”

Although it’s been rather popular among musicologists and university groups due to its flexible nature, its fringe musical element and its very challenging piano writing and vocal parts, Songs for a New World remains a work of relative obscurity in the mainstream. “Before [this production] all I knew were the songs,” Greaves recalls with amusement. “I knew so little about [the work] that I didn’t realise there isn’t a script. And there’s no director’s notes; there’s no staging notes; there’s nothing. When you get the rights, you simply get the book of songs. That’s it.”

That hasn’t deterred her from the challenging work, which covers styles as varied as gospel, pop ballad, classical, contemporary opera, R&B and jazz, and includes such diversified roles – played by eight singers here – that range from husband and wife, friends, lovers, mother and unborn child, father and son, and so on. “You might not even get all that when you come to see the show,” Greaves says of her roughly defined ‘characters’. “[For] an audience that hasn’t seen the show before – which is going to be 98 per cent of the people here – not only to listen to [the] all-new music, [but to] try and get some really highly conceived ideas of grand design [as well]… I think they’ve got enough to think about,” she laughs.

That said, according to the director, there’s simply no way that you get nothing from the performance. “[The] worst case scenario [would be that] somebody comes and sees the show,” she says, “and enjoys eight of the most spectacular singers singing some of the most wonderfully moving songs. That’d be [the] basic line of what you’re going to get out of this.” So, at the very least, you’ve got a gig.

Edmund Lee

Tickets: 3128 8288; www.hkticketing.com.