A glorious revival

THE ravishing epic musical Forbidden City: Portrait Of An Empress returns for its fourth run as a well-oiled machine. There's not a step out of sync, not a hair out of place, and rarely a note out of tune. Its clockwork precision comes as a relief for the musical lover who has had to endure a string of half-baked homegrown musicals this season, such as Tropicana and Detention Katong.

Forbidden City telescopes 70 years of Chinese history, from the 1830s through to the early 1900s. It covers such tumultuous events as the Second Opium War, the Hundred Days Reform and the Boxer Rebellion. These become the backdrop for the story of Yehenara, a young woman picked at age 16 to join the Xianfeng Emperor's harem in 1851.

Desperate for the Emperor's affections, she quickly becomes his favourite and bears him a son. In accordance with court customs, the boy is taken away from her to be raised separately. But before the Emperor dies, he names the boy as his successor. Later he too dies, making Yehenara effectively the most powerful person in China until her death in 1908.