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SCMP Reporter

MOST of them keep it under their hats, but there is a small group of people in America who can sing everything Cole Porter ever wrote.

  Not just Let's Do It, which - let's face it - anyone over 30 can do, but also more obscure stuff like River God and An Old-fashioned Garden.

  No really, and they meet up with each other regularly and get their kicks out of seeing his original manuscripts, the ones that have the crossings out just as Porter marked them.

  I know, because I met one of the not-so-closet Porter fans, and he told me about his friends in New York: 'you can ask them anything about Cole Porter, all the words to any of his songs, and they'll know them.'   Jeffrey B. Moss, who was in town to promote the latest Cole Porter musical Aladdin (yes, by a miracle it is making its stage debut more than 30 years after the master of risque and romantic lyrics died) has a professional interest in what he admits is a personal obsession.

  Cole Porter, after all, was one of those writers who made Broadway musicals Broadway musicals. And Moss is one of those directors who makes Broadway-style musicals travel.

  Since 1989 he's brought Annie, Peter Pan, Hello Dolly, My Fair Lady and 42nd Street to Hong Kong and other ports in Asia.

  Moss looked shocked at the very suggestion that his latest venture, Aladdin, might be full of men in frocks and girls dressed as boys.

  'Let's get the first thing straight; this is no pantomime. This is a musical. It just happens to be a musical that hasn't been shown before.'   Aladdin's first and only performance before the show's Asian tour this winter was a single live CBS broadcast seen on black-and-white television sets in the United States back in the 50s.

  'Those days they didn't have any way of recording what went out on TV,' Moss recalled, 'so those of us who never saw it have no way of knowing what the show looked like in 1958.'   He did know that the original production had a cast that included Basil Rathbone (better known as the pipe-puffing Sherlock Holmes), with Sal Mineo in the title role and Anna Maria Alberghetti as the Princess who steals Aladdin's heart.

  It was Porter's last musical score. His wife had died just before, in 1956, and, with his leg amputated in the same year, he lived out his last years as a lonely recluse, dying in 1964.

  And the original score for Aladdin was mislaid under the myriad of other more famous original scores in the Cole Porter Foundation's archives.

  There had been rumours for several years among the Porter fans of the existence of an unknown Aladdin score, Moss said.

  Eventually he and a team of fellow Broadway buffs, including New York Times theatre reviewer Michael Feingold who eventually wrote the script for this Aladdin, had permission to enter the Foundation's vaults, and retrieve the lost manuscripts.

  'We touched them, we studied them, we could even see where Cole Porter had crossed out his mistakes in the score,' said Moss reverentially.

  While the songs are pure Porter, the script is new, contemporary and - we are promised - funny.

  There is a thoroughly modern genie, the emperor learns to tap dance, and Aladdin is seen on roller blades.

  It has some of the favourites for the oldies to hum and the kids to learn, including I've Got you Under My Skin and Trust Your Destiny to Your Star.

  There are also some less well-known songs, including Come to the Supermarket in Old Peking, which could well become the theme tune for commercials advertising shopping ventures in modern Beijing.

  It also has plenty of stage magic, with Kevin Ramsey - who has won The Theatre World Award and the Astaire Award for Broadway performances in Oh, Kay and Five Guys named Moe - playing the wicked magician.

  The illusions are created by Mark O'Brian, who has created special effects for many companies including Walt Disney World in Orlando and Nickelodeon Television.

  'The princess gets cut into four, some people disappear into thin air, and other characters levitate. And of course there's the flying carpet,' Moss added.

  Unlike the recently-released Disney cartoon which is set vaguely in ancient Persia, this musical Aladdin is very much geared for audiences further east, with the story set in the streets and Forbidden City of Beijing.

  Aladdin, our hero, played by Chinese American Welly Yang (on temporary leave from Miss Saigon on Broadway to take this role), is a poor boy selling pans in the marketplace.

  One day he sees the beautiful Princess, played by Filipina star Imelda de Los Reyes, who also took time out from Miss Saigon, and falls helplessly (although as the story progresses, not hopelessly) in love with her.

  The naive Aladdin is befriended by an evil magician who sends him into a cave to collect a lamp. But as fate has it, our hero ends up with the lamp and its female genie who makes his wishes come true, while the magician gets locked in the cave.

  Moss got a bit mushy while describing it all. 'It's the kind of show where you can put your arm around your kids and be with the whole family.

  'It's a fable for everyone: the message is that you should trust your destiny and your stars, and then your dreams will come true.'   When he wasn't getting emotional, Moss was full of wisecracks. 'We've got problems with the live duck,' he said. 'We found it after extensive auditions, and now it wants more money.'   And the carpet might not make it into Hong Kong, Moss added. 'We don't know whether we can land it between the high buildings.'   The carpet may not be subject to special Hong Kong customs clearance, but the planned pyrotechnics are having to go through some stringent checks, said Dale Rennie, director of Midas Promotions which has brought Aladdin to Asia.

  'We've had to fill in more than a dozen forms, our people have had to come over from the States to explain what they want to do, and even now, just over a week before the show, we don't know whether we can do all the stage effects.



Playing it like it was