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So far, so conventional, but Muldowney has written for a musically adept actor, Philip Quast, rather than for a classically trained singer. This makes a big difference. Fenton's poems offer a very specific narrative, following the thoughts of a man still wincing from his divorce and setting up home in a new city, whose bitterness is assuaged by TV coverage of the 2004 tsunami. Quast, sensitively miked, has a good voice and was a reasonably relaxed soloist. The pursed-lipped parameters of the operatic voice were jettisoned. But was what they were replaced with - the monochrome, wisecracking tone you can get in the more cerebral end of musical theatre - any less limited? Not a bit. Beginning with a waltz, Muldowney's music for the first three songs was well-crafted pastiche, attaining real edge only with the accompaniment to the fourth song, in which the tsunami is first witnessed.
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