Theatre Review: One Love, A Legacy – Celebrating Joanna & Leslie Wong and Chinese Theatre Circle 《一缕柔情千秋业》

Documentary, biographical theatre tracing Chinese Theatre Circle’s roots, its impact, and the love that’s carried it for 45 years and beyond. For 45 years, Chinese Theatre Circle has been doing something no other company has done for as long and as fiercely as they have: keeping Chinese opera alive in Singapore. And to commemorate that, One Love, A Legacy: Celebrating Joanna & Leslie Wong and … Continue reading Theatre Review: One Love, A Legacy – Celebrating Joanna & Leslie Wong and Chinese Theatre Circle 《一缕柔情千秋业》

Concert Review: Wagner’s Siegfried by The Orchestra of Music Makers

Orchestra of the Music Makers returns to Wagner’s Ring cycle with a six-hour Siegfried that transforms the Esplanade Concert Hall into a world of gods, dragons, forests and awakening desire. Duration: 360 minutes, including a 20 minute and 80 minute break Six hours is a long time to spend with Siegfried. It is an even longer time to spend with Wagner’s Siegfried if the world … Continue reading Concert Review: Wagner’s Siegfried by The Orchestra of Music Makers

★★★★☆ Theatre Review: MONSTRESS by ART:DIS

A harrowing, brutally honest look at what happens when we judge what we see without looking closer, and the people who fall through the cracks as a result. For a long time now, disability in Singapore has been framed through the language of charity and celebration: to champion the differently abled, applaud their resilience, celebrate the obstacles they have overcome, and hold them up as … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Theatre Review: MONSTRESS by ART:DIS

Preview: One Love, A Legacy – Celebrating Joanna & Leslie Wong and Chinese Theatre Circle by Chinese Theatre Circle

For more than six decades, Joanna Wong has devoted her life to Cantonese opera. She has performed it, taught it, modernised it and taken it around the world. Alongside her late husband, Leslie Wong, she also helped build one of Singapore’s most important Chinese opera institutions from the ground up. Now, as Chinese Theatre Circle (CTC) marks its 45th anniversary, that extraordinary journey is coming … Continue reading Preview: One Love, A Legacy – Celebrating Joanna & Leslie Wong and Chinese Theatre Circle by Chinese Theatre Circle

Wagnerian Ambition: Orchestra of the Music Makers Music Director Chan Tze Law on ‘Siegfried’ and OMM’s future

For Chan Tze Law, the question of whether the Orchestra of the Music Makers (OMM) will complete Wagner’s Ring cycle is, for now, best left unanswered. OMM has already travelled three quarters of the way. After Die Walküre in 2020 and Das Rheingold in 2023, the Singapore-based orchestra will take on Siegfried at the Esplanade Concert Hall on 5 September, bringing one of the most … Continue reading Wagnerian Ambition: Orchestra of the Music Makers Music Director Chan Tze Law on ‘Siegfried’ and OMM’s future

Esplanade’s The Studios 2026: An Interview with Claire Teo and Oon Shu An on seeing, being, and performing ‘MONSTRESS’

What does it mean to truly see another person? Not simply to look at them, but to recognise their struggles, question our assumptions and notice the quiet ways people can slip through the cracks. These are the questions surrounding MONSTRESS, a new work by visually impaired theatre-maker Claire Teo and ART:DIS that examines disability, caregiving and the everyday systems that shape who is heard, believed … Continue reading Esplanade’s The Studios 2026: An Interview with Claire Teo and Oon Shu An on seeing, being, and performing ‘MONSTRESS’

★★★☆☆ Theatre Review: Multiple Bad Things by Back to Back Theatre

Nightmarish fever dream of a devised theatre work problematises and interrogates the complications of disability and accessibility today. From its title alone, Multiple Bad Things possesses a distinctly ominous quality. What are these bad things? A series of terrible events waiting to happen, or the accumulation of smaller cruelties that eventually become something much more sinister? The production’s visual material might initially suggest something whimsical … Continue reading ★★★☆☆ Theatre Review: Multiple Bad Things by Back to Back Theatre

Preview: Baybeats 2026 presents four days of independent music, big sounds and new bands to discover

Singapore’s alternative music festival returns this September for its 25th edition, bringing four days of heavy riffs, dreamy soundscapes, genre-bending experiments and some of the region’s most exciting independent acts to Esplanade. From Japanese rock heavyweights and Korean indie favourites to homegrown underground stalwarts and a new generation of Baybeats Budding Bands, this year’s festival is less about sticking to one sound than following your … Continue reading Preview: Baybeats 2026 presents four days of independent music, big sounds and new bands to discover

Esplanade’s The Studios 2026: An interview with Ingrid Voorendt, Associate Director, Back to Back Theatre on ‘Multiple Bad Things’

In a placeless warehouse at the end of the world, three employees are given a possibly pointless task. As they struggle to work together, the boundaries between cooperation and conflict begin to fray. What starts with politeness gradually descends into sly victimisation and bad behaviour, while language shifts from playful and absurd to threatening and deadly serious. In MULTIPLE BAD THINGS, award-winning Australian company Back … Continue reading Esplanade’s The Studios 2026: An interview with Ingrid Voorendt, Associate Director, Back to Back Theatre on ‘Multiple Bad Things’

★★★★★ Theatre Review: Handle with Care by Ontroerend Goed (Esplanade’s The Studios 2026)

A tender, bewildering piece of participatory theatre where audiences learn to get things right (and wrong) together, revealing us at our most human selves. Performance attended 7 Aug 8pm60 minutes, no intermission In theatre, one would naturally assume that actors are required. There might be a director somewhere in the wings, technicians behind the scenes, a script determining what happens next, and an audience whose … Continue reading ★★★★★ Theatre Review: Handle with Care by Ontroerend Goed (Esplanade’s The Studios 2026)