Jan Tien-hao (冉天豪) grew up listening to music that was popular in Taiwan and China during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
The 37-year-old composer said he chose songs from that era for the musical A Love Story About Shanghai and Taipei (上海台北雙城戀曲), beginning tonight at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, as much to evoke nostalgia in the audience as it to attract a younger generation to the theater.
“Young people hate these songs when they are growing up,” he said. “But I’ve re-arranged [the songs] in a way that I hope can appeal to them.”
If the three musical numbers performed at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, which included a heart-wrenching rendition of Sweet Honey Honey (甜蜜蜜), are anything to go by, they should do just that.
The musical features the Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir (台北愛樂室內合唱團) and Taipei Philharmonic Theater (愛樂劇工廠) performing with Qi Qi (齊奇), a well-known opera singer from Shanghai.
Taiwanese performers include Chang Shih-pei (張世珮),Chung Hsiao-tan (鍾筱丹) and Aska Yang (楊宗緯) of One Million Star (超級星光大道) talent show fame.
Directed by Hsieh Shu-ching (謝淑靖), A Love Story About Shanghai and Taipei is a lavish production about love and loss. It tells the story of Pei-pei (裴裴), a young woman living in contemporary Taipei who travels to Shanghai for a vacation and falls in love with a man named Gao-yang (高楊).
Pei-pei carries a black and white photograph of her grandfather that was snapped before he fled to Taiwan in 1949. When she shows it to Gao-yang, he is astounded to see his grandmother in the same image.
The photo serves as a vehicle to shift the narrative focus back to when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war — a time when lovers and families were separated by events beyond their control.
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