Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Rock Hard – A Theatrical A Cappella Adventure
Yat Po Singers
Genre: A Cappella, Music, Theatre
Venue: Big at theSpace Triplex
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
For a truly out-of-the-box vocal experience, put Rock Hard – A Theatrical A Cappella Adventure on your Fringe schedule. You will be stunned, impressed, and entertained in a way that no other a cappella troupe delivers.
Review
Rock Hard is true artistic fusion of dance, acrobatics, storytelling, a cappella singing, and sound effects. It is an extremely clever weaving of art forms that rely on each other to deliver a complete audience experience. Each of the seven performers brings their unique styling and gifts to the show, and together, they are very effective.
Rock Hard is billed as a cappella. Technically, that is true, as the performers use only their voice to communicate, other than the additional clarinet. The vocalizing is both harmony singing and atonal. This is not your typical “Pitch Perfect” style contemporary a cappella show or even a show choir. The voices create sound effects that set the mood for the action, from high-velocity double tonguing for on-stage high energy bits to more unison singing. There are traditional Chinese music elements alongside vocal percussion and atmospheric sounds made by the voices.
The show tells the story of group of scouts going on a hiking trip. Dressed in white shirts, black shorts, ties and carrying identical backpacks, the singers march onto the stage, followed by a clarinetist. They are heading out to explore nature. They reach a rock, which is portrayed by a single black suitcase in the middle of the stage. It is the famous and mysterious Amah Rock. They use the “rock” as a focus point, as they portray scenes of the past of Hong Kong, with its myths and dreams. Like typical kids on an adventure, they tell ghost stories and whisper about the folklore. At one point, they lose light and get lost in the dark, when they suddenly stumble onto a Chinese wedding scene. The music turns into a frenetic and energetic percussive soundscape. There is a scene with a woman and child, where they sing a gentle lullaby. They continue on marching into the mountains, with storms and rain, all portrayed with musical changes.
The challenge for the singers is to maintain the continuous production of sounds, especially the rapid-fire sequences. Similar to beatboxing, every bit of the vocal cord and mouth are pushed to the limit. The fact that these young artists can sustain the high level of performance for 55 minutes is nothing short of amazing. The singers have enormous vocal and emotional range.
Yat Po Singers was founded by Cheuk-yin NG (composer), Yuri NG (stage director), Patrick CHIU (choral director) and Kathleen NG (executive director). They created and produced the very first a cappella theatrical show in Hong Kong at the 2008 New Vision Arts Festival. This lead to Yat Po being funded as the first professional a cappella choral theatre company in Hong Kong.
The singers in this show are Raoul Chan, Margaret Cheung, Hin-yung Ma, Alvin Mui, Ronald Tsang, Winky Wong. There is one instrumentalist, clarinetist Johnny Fong.
The show premiered at the New Vision Arts Festival in 2008 in Hong Kong and had numerous re-runs since 2010. The premiere performance had 19 singers, 1 clarinetist and 1 dancer. Other renditions have included school choirs and a clarinetist. The production has also toured to different cities in Asia, including Shantou, Shanghai, Macau, Seoul,
Because it is a non-speaking show, it is best to download the story in order to fully understand the action. The producers provide a QR code as you enter the theatre. For a truly out-of-the-box vocal experience, put Rock Hard – A Theatrical A Cappella Adventure on your Fringe schedule. You will be stunned, impressed, and entertained in a way that no other a cappella troupe delivers.
