Part memoir and part epic, Titoudao is a portrait of celebration and grief for the fading wayang scene. How many of us have had a chance to catch a wayang performance in real life, on the streets as originally intended? With the amount of progress and modernisation Singapore has undergone over the years, wayang is but a lost art one can only experience in the … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Review: Titoudao (2024) by Toy Factory
Weak direction and a script still in its infancy leave this play about drug abuse bereft of an emotional anchor. Category Score (out of 10) Direction (Adeeb Fazah) 4 Script (Shaleihin Pi’ee) 4 Performance (Zulfiqar Izzudin, Ong Xue Min, Wilfred Lee Kim Chye, Fadhil Daud, Jayden Lim Jun De) 4 Lighting (Fazree Azharie) 5 Sound (Vick Low) 5 Set (Vivien Lau) 4 Total 26/60 (43%) … Continue reading ★★☆☆☆ Review: For My Highness by Toy Factory Productions
Toy Factory Productions Ltd has never shied away from nurturing the next generation of thetaremakers, with programmes such as playwright incubation programme The Wright Stuff and their more experimental Lab Projects. Next week, the company will be turning the spotlight on their DIRECT ENTRY programme, a director-mentorship programme led by Toy Factory Artistic Director Goh Boon Teck, as the chosen mentee culminates the mentorship with … Continue reading Toy Factory’s For My Highness: An Interview with director Adeeb Fazah and playwright Shaleihin Pi’ee
Toy Factory Productions Ltd’s director-mentorship programme, DIRECT ENTRY, returns for it’s second season to bestow promising theatre director, Adeeb Fazah with a timely original script, For My Highness – which spotlights on the crippling vices of substance abuse and its inevitable infliction onto familial ties. DIRECT ENTRY is spearheaded and mentored by award-winning director, Goh Boon Teck, as an initiative to nurture more theatre directors … Continue reading Preview: Toy Factory’s DIRECT ENTRY returns with new play, “For My Highness” by Shaleihin Pi’ee
The history of Singapore as seen through the eyes of Mrs Lee Kuan Yew. Everyone knows Lee Kuan Yew, first Prime Minister of Singapore who steered the nation from British colony to independent first world nation. But few know the story of his wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo, often shying away from the limelight, yet always by his side as an integral part of his … Continue reading ★★★★☆ Review: Kwa Geok Choo by Toy Factory Productions
Everyone knows her as the wife of Lee Kuan Yew and mother of Lee Hsien Loong. But what do we know about Kwa Geok Choo? This monologue follows her from girlhood and early romance to life as political wife and mother; and top conveyancing lawyer and main breadwinner of the Lee Family. It explores how it might have felt to be, as Lee Kuan Yew … Continue reading Preview: Kwa Geok Choo by Toy Factory Productions
In a fit of fury, a mistress is murdered Under the moon and stars, a man pursues a rare talent To show his loyalty, a general sacrifices himself These scenes tell the story of the laosheng’s artistry Song Jiang Kills Yan Xijiao is startling and suspenseful; Xiao He Pursues Han Xin is full of earnest vigour; and General Yang’s Sacrifice is tragic in its desolation. These … Continue reading Preview: Tracing Origins by Christopher Choo, Philip Chan and May Choong
Literary pursuit as a means to liberation. In the modern age, book clubs are often played for comedy and portrayed as frivolous affairs, an excuse for members, often bored housewives, to gather and drink, rather than seriously discuss work of literary merit. But underneath the mirth and laughter often lies an undercurrent of camaraderie, where members of a club find in such spaces a rare … Continue reading ★★★★★ Review: The Crab Flower Club by Toy Factory Productions
For the first time since premiering as part of the 2009 Singapore Arts Festival, Goh Boon Teck’s The Crab Flower Club finally receives a restaging, more than a decade on. Performed for the first time in Mandarin in Singapore, the drama-opera set in the late Qing dynasty follows five daughters from the respectable Wu household, as they reunite on the eve of their father’s 60th … Continue reading Preview: The Crab Flower Club by Toy Factory Productions
Let bygones be bygones. Written by Koh Tian Seng and directed by Adeeb Fazah, Skin, the final play to conclude Toy Factory’s 2021 Wright Stuff Festival, is a promising new work that deals with ideas of faith, commitment, and bodybuilding. The story follows Yang Xin (Dennis Sofian) as he decides to take his relationship with Afifah (Elisa Mustika) to the next level. But before he … Continue reading ★★★☆☆ Review: Skin by Toy Factory
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