Ice Queen melts

What: Faye Wong 2011 Concert Tour

Venue: Singapore Indoor Stadium

Attendance: 6,500

When: Last Saturday, 8pm

WHILE lesser divas strive to make their presence felt in live shows, Faye Wong makes her absence keenly experienced.

On the Singapore stop of her comeback world tour, the Mando-pop queen delivered an artful, theatrical two-hour set, before staging her own disappearance a la The Illusionist.

After singing the last song, Flower On The Other Shore, Wong seemed to disappear into the projection screen.

A mirrored panel spanning the stage slid up. Spotlights blazed, and the house lights went up, leaving the first few rows of the bewildered audience facing their own reflections.

Slowly, it dawned upon them that they could leave, to the sounds of Wong’s pre-recorded voice singing the Heart Sutra.

It was a masterful meta-fictional stroke: The devoutly Buddhist star had not only eluded the public’s efforts to pin her down as flesh-and-blood idol, but also made a point about the inherent emptiness of all things.

If a more spiritual message had been imparted at a pop concert, I have yet to encounter it.

For years, the China-born singer has been known for being aloof, standing stock-still, unsmiling, to deliver CD-quality vocals at non-interactive concerts.

Now 42, her ice-queen image has coalesced into a coherent myth that she and her collaborators tap into for stagecraft.

From the initial wintry set – complete with bare branches and snow-laden trees, and her white, voluminous caped outfit – to the ice mound she arrived onstage encased in, the expectations of a frosty, taciturn diva were played up.

Later, in the four seasons- themed concert, the ice queen thawed. She flounced back in a red-and-white can-can dress, astride a wind machine Marilyn Monroe-style, to sing her early Cantonese hit, Dream Lover, her yodelling still in fine form.

She did Rock Faye with To Love, swaying, strutting and microphone twirling.

In the drum ‘n’ bass-styled New Tenant, a chromed globe swivelled and opened to reveal her in its plush-red interior, wearing a billowing, white chiffon dress printed with black skulls.

And in The Last Blossom, she hoisted a red megaphone to breathe a verse. As black objects smashed into smithereens on video screens behind her, she belted out the searing chorus like a wicked-witch dictator, holding her willing captives rapt.

The effect was stylishly alluring, and her concept, art-rock spectacle was well wrought.

But concessions, too, had been made for fans who prefer her more traditional fare. Obligatory popular ballads, such as Wishing We Last Forever and I’m Willing made the set list, and she sang Sky (1994) sitting in a black feather-like swing festooned with fairy lights, which “ascended” over the audience.

Who cares that she sounded a little hoarse at first, that a little murkiness has crept into her famed crystalline upper register, and that she relies a little more on her falsetto range to hit those high notes?

Certainly not the rabid fans, who went wild whenever she uttered “xie xie” or “dor tze” at the end of some songs – the sum total of what she said in the entire concert.

The diva is still celestial. She is everything, and she is nothing.

clarac@sph.com.sg

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