★★★★★ Dance Review: Planet [wanderer] by Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa (SIFA 2026)

Awe-inspiring, hypnotic dance-installation, that takes audiences on an existential odyssey through a world that’s hostile, hauntingly beautiful, and beyond our control. Some performances tell stories, but Planet [wanderer] creates a world. Surreal, unnerving, and at times profoundly unsettling, Damien Jalet and Kohei Nawa’s latest collaboration unfolds less like a dance performance than a waking dream. Playing as part of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of … Continue reading ★★★★★ Dance Review: Planet [wanderer] by Damien Jalet & Kohei Nawa (SIFA 2026)

★★★★★ Theatre Review: Hedda Gabler by National Theater Company of Korea (SIFA 2026)

Lee Hyeyoung delivers a masterclass performance in Park Jung-hee’s hypnotic, sexually charged reimagining of Ibsen’s classic, now transformed into a suffocating psychological thriller of a K-drama. Before we see anything in the National Theater Company of Korea’s Hedda Gabler, we hear a gunshot. It tears through the darkness with such violence that the audience visibly jolts. And from that very first moment, director Park Jung-hee … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Hedda Gabler by National Theater Company of Korea (SIFA 2026)

★★★☆☆ Dance Review: Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 by T.H.E Dance Company (SIFA 2026)

T.H.E toes the line between human and machine in this visually ambitious production, occasionally overwhelmed by technology superseding the very humanity it seeks to explore.  Playing as part of the 2026 Singapore International Festival of Arts, before T.H.E Dance Company’s Strangely Familiar even begins, the world of the performance is already quietly consuming us. The soundscape hums through the theatre with an eerie, dystopian distance, … Continue reading ★★★☆☆ Dance Review: Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 by T.H.E Dance Company (SIFA 2026)

★★★★★ Theatre Review: Last Rites by Liu Xiaoyi / Emergency Stairs (SIFA 2026)

Five masters of performance confront mortality and artistic legacy in Liu Xiaoyi’s ambitious, cathartic cross-border work. What has always made theatre so beautiful is its temporality. Every performance exists only once; even repeated over multiple nights, no show will ever look or feel exactly the same again. It is fragile, fleeting, and alive precisely because it disappears the moment it is completed. By extension, the … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Last Rites by Liu Xiaoyi / Emergency Stairs (SIFA 2026)

★★★★☆ Theatre Review: 6 Microlectures on Genocides (May 2026) by theriverproduction

Anxious, tightly constructed theatre that confronts the limits of speech, empathy, and artistic response in the face of ongoing catastrophe. Singapore’s relationship with the Israel–Palestine conflict is shaped by a long-standing posture of official neutrality, coupled with tight constraints on public political expression. In practice, this has produced a civic environment where public commentary on the conflict is often carefully circumscribed, reflecting both domestic concerns … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Theatre Review: 6 Microlectures on Genocides (May 2026) by theriverproduction

Theatre Review: Year Zero by ART:DIS (SIFA 2026)

Meta-theatrical act of frustration at how difficult diversity and inclusivity is to achieve in reality, and an argument of its impossibility. Over the years, disability arts in Singapore has grown immensely, moving beyond perceptions of charity or pity, and towards recognition of disabled artists as professionals in their own right: practitioners with formal training, artistic rigour and distinct creative voices. At the forefront of this … Continue reading Theatre Review: Year Zero by ART:DIS (SIFA 2026)

★★★★☆ Theatre Review: Hamlet by Teatro La Plaza (SIFA 2026)

Life-affirming deconstruction of Shakespeare’s tragedy that insists on the validity of every human experience, regardless of disability or neurotypicality. Theatre and disability have long shared an uneasy relationship. Theatre is, after all, an art form built on visibility: on bodies being watched, voices being heard, and stories being witnessed. To place atypical bodies centre stage is therefore an act of resistance against mainstream ideas of … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Theatre Review: Hamlet by Teatro La Plaza (SIFA 2026)

★★★★☆ Theatre Review: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Base Entertainment Asia

From rap battles to nightmare squirrels and chocolate waterfalls, this Roald Dahl adaptation is is weird, whimsical, and delightfully emotional. There is something inherently magical about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Whether through Roald Dahl’s original novel, the beloved 1971 film, or the many adaptations that followed, the story has always lived in that strange space between fantasy and cautionary tale; whimsical on the surface, … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Theatre Review: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Base Entertainment Asia

★★★★★ Dance Theatre Review: Dream In The Peony Pavilion by Suzhou Song and Dance Theatre (HKAF 2026)

Li Xing’s Dream in The Peony Pavilion transforms theatre into a living, visually stunning poem about love, desire and transcendence. HONG KONG – Watching Dream in The Peony Pavilion feels less like witnessing a dance production and more like entering a dream that slowly swallows the theatre whole. Before the show even begins, smoke blankets the stage, already creating this dreamscape as though we are … Continue reading ★★★★★ Dance Theatre Review: Dream In The Peony Pavilion by Suzhou Song and Dance Theatre (HKAF 2026)

★★★★☆ Theatre Review: Makan Culture by Jo Tan and Krish Natarajan (SIFA 2026)

Earnest, wry and smile-inducing commentary on pride, joy, and criticism in the local arts and culture scene. Singapore has long measured success in terms of efficiency, practicality and polish, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that the local arts scene often finds itself trapped in an exhausting cycle of comparison. Why watch a homegrown production when there’s Broadway and West End to assure us of ‘quality’? Why … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Theatre Review: Makan Culture by Jo Tan and Krish Natarajan (SIFA 2026)