SINGAPORE – A strong slate of productions in 2023 guarantees a tight race to the finish at The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards 2024, with the biggest nominations evenly spread among at least four productions.
The former Singapore Repertory Theatre, recently embroiled in a ruckus over its name change, has a slight edge with five nominations for its Shakespeare adaptation A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The $2 million blockbuster production at Fort Canning Green is up for Production of the Year and the technical categories of set, costume and sound. Its leading man Ghafir Akbar is also nominated for Best Actor for his dual roles as Theseus and faerie king Oberon.
Notwithstanding its drastically different scale and vibe, Myle Yan Tay’s Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes, a talky and taut chamber play interrogating male friendship and minority sensibilities, has also been richly awarded with four nominations.
The Checkpoint Theatre season opener is in the running for Production of the Year, plus Best Ensemble for the cast and a Best Director nod for co-founder Huzir Sulaiman.
Tay’s debut is also a hot favourite in the Best Original Script category – one packed in 2024 with stellar and original writing. It squares off against Joel Tan’s equally fantastic G*d Is A Woman, Wild Rice’s comical satire of middle-class prudery, also up for Production of the Year.
Tan has two entries in the Best Original Script category, the other being his libretto for opera Butterfly Lovers – a valiant first attempt at the form. Amanda Chong’s crowd-pleasing Psychob***h and Lucas Ho’s nuanced exploration of a middle-aged religious couple in Tender Submission are also in contention.
Doubt: A Parable, Pangdemonium’s adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s questioning of moral certainty in a New York church school, rounds off the best production nominees, its four nominations including Best Actress for Neo Swee Lin, who has a tour de force as dour disciplinarian Sister Aloysius.
It is Neo’s third nomination in the category, and she is up against potent turns, notably from Sharda Harrison as a recalcitrant drug addict in People, Places & Things and Sindhura Kalidas for her one-woman effort in Psychob***h.
The returning Jada might also yet cause an upset here, with her subtle portrayal of a long-suffering but self-assured gender-fluid Malay uncle in dementia play Potong.
The best production contenders have thrown up two heavyweights in the Best Director category – Huzir for Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes and Timothy Koh for Doubt – while The Theatre Practice’s artistic director Kuo Jian Hong is included for her masterly orchestration of a sprawling cast across two buildings in Waterloo Street for the promenade theatre piece Four Horse Road.
There is a surprise candidate here in Subramanian Ganesh and Karthikeyan Somasundram of Agam Theatre Lab, for their uproarious Twin Murder In The Green Mansion, staged during the Kalaa Utsavam – Indian Festival of Arts.
In addition to the Best Director category, the Singaporean Tamil adaptation of British classic The Play That Goes Wrong (2012) is also up for Best Ensemble and Best Set – this latter nomination richly deserved after set designer Lim Keng San’s mansion cracked and collapsed perfectly over the two-hour run time.
For the lean Best Actor category, Darshan Nathan, making his professional debut at 17, sneaks in for his portrayal of a budding psychopath in Sight Lines Entertainment’s Crack The Case: Mind Hunter, in competition with veterans Ghafir, Chua Enlai’s witch in Wild Rice pantomime Snow White, and “king of medleys” Sebastian Tan in retrospective Broadway Beng Growing Gold.
Two Singapore International Festival of Arts (Sifa) acts, Pompeii and Angel Island, go head to head in the Best Multimedia category for the way they experimented with form. They prove that Sifa is a fertile platform for innovation.
Pompeii projected live footage shot on stage onto a screen, while Angel Island’s ethereal multimedia marshalled by Brian Gothong Tan provided wondrous magic to an otherwise sombre meditation on the plight of 20th-century Chinese immigrants to the United States.
The ST Life Theatre Awards is an annual recognition of the best in theatre by ST, which has organised it every year since 2001, bar the pandemic year of 2021.
The judging panel for the 23rd edition of the awards is the ST arts team, comprising arts editor Ong Sor Fern, correspondent Clement Yong, and journalists Shawn Hoo and Charmaine Lim.
The winners will be announced on March 13.
Micro-trends
The Barbie hype in July and August helped with the promotion of two home-grown one-woman plays in the same period – Chong’s Psychob***h and Jo Tan’s restaging, King – but more overlooked is the confluence of productions tackling religion.
Apart from Doubt and G*d Is A Woman, there was Checkpoint Theatre’s Tender Submission and Teater Ekamatra’s Potong, all explicitly touching on Christianity and Islam.
Esplanade commission I’m Trying To Say Something True, directed by Renee Yeong, also had the character reciting The Lord’s Prayer in Mandarin, all gesturing to the continued influence of religion on artists’ lives, as well as its enduring role in how individuals and society navigate modernity.
Beyond that, it was a year of excellent and epic restagings, chief of which was the five-hour, 66-character, nine-language historical hurricane Hotel by Wild Rice.
But the shorter Four Horse Road is also expansive in its own way, particular in its attention paid to hyper-local settings that saw audiences walk from scene to scene to play witness to forgotten vignettes in history.
Both involved supernatural activity, once more paying tribute to South-east Asia’s reputation as one of the horror haunts of the world.
Intriguingly, multiple leading theatre practitioners also decided in 2023 that audiences have matured enough to handle more of the opera form, most ground-breaking being Wild Rice’s and Melbourne-based Victorian Opera’s project of an English version of The Butterfly Lovers, complete with exquisite xifu (Chinese opera costumes) designed by Max Tan and a live orchestra.
Others pursuing this modernised, hybrid-opera line include The Theatre Practice’s The Soldier And His Virtuous Wife, Toy Factory Productions’ Quest – The White Hare, and Nine Years Theatre’s Immortal Variables – to varying merit but brave nonetheless.
Otherwise, the transgression of gender norms continued, from Jada in Potong to Chua Enlai’s witch in Snow White to Jo Tan’s cross-dressing drag king in King, plus a reversal of roles in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that saw Titania casting a spell on Oberon instead – a timely ploy that gave a classic play a fresh spin.
A fruitful year for theatre all round as audiences recover, promising playwrights stake their claim and companies continue to find ways of challenging entrenched perspectives without being predictable.
What frontrunners say:
Directors:
Timothy Koh, director of Doubt: A Parable: “Doubt is one of my favourite plays. It is a text I have been waiting to direct since I was a teenager.”
Huzir Sulaiman, on directing the dialogue-heavy Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes: “Part of the director’s duty is to oversee the rhythm: sometimes letting it breathe, sometimes pushing the pace.”
Four Horse Road director Kuo Jian Hong, on the fire that broke out at The Theatre Practice 10 days before the opening day: “We re-activated the burnt areas, rebuilt sets, re-conditioned costumes, and through the chaos, actors continued to rehearse.”
Subramanian Ganesh and Karthikeyan Somasundram, joint directors of Twin Murder In The Green Mansion: “Comedy is serious business. It was particularly tough to get a bunch of good actors to act like they were bad actors.”
Actresses:
Neo Swee Lin, who plays Sister Aloysius in Doubt: A Parable: “In the end, I am a Peranakan Hokkien person pretending to be a cloistered nun in the Bronx in the 1960s. To say I did not feel the imposter syndrome come upon me would be untrue.”
Joanna Dong, who plays Mei Ying in The Soldier And His Virtuous Wife: “Mei Ying is a Scorpio, like me. She’s passionate, fiercely loyal and capable of powerful rage when backed into a corner.”
Jada, on returning to acting after a 25-year hiatus: “I wanted to find out if I still had it in me. Welcome to my mid-life crisis.”
Actors:
Before each show, Ghafir Akbar, who plays Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, connected with the park at Fort Canning Green, where the performance was staged. “The trees, the grass, the two mynahs that come to visit at 7pm every day – they are all part of the magic that takes us into the fairy land.”
Broadway Beng Sebastian Tan: “The actor playing it is sibei (very in Hokkien) handsome and charming.” His special ritual? “A shot of whisky.”
Chua Enlai, the witch in pantomime Snow White: “Being asked to play the villain was such a delicious opportunity – the challenge is to be loved as much as you are hated.”
Playwrights:
Joel Tan, on G*d Is A Woman: “Nothing is more excruciating than an unfunny comedy. I’m glad it landed, intact, and that no one was hurt in the process. I really went on a journey of nauseated self-doubt with this one.”
Amanda Chong, who penned Psychob***h: “I wrote it straight from the uterus. The overwhelming response to the play was deeply cathartic for me, as so much of the play was grounded in personal experience.”
Lucas Ho, on Tender Submission: “I was concerned about the form of the play, essentially one long scene unfolding in a single space over 90 minutes. The astute direction meant the play could breathe and sing and snarl at the right moments.”
Designers:
Eucien Chia, who designed the round set for Doubt: A Parable: “My main inspiration was traditional Gothic church architecture, which has a cross-shaped plan, with the altar at the intersection of the cross.”
Max Tan, who used a “rojak” approach to design the costumes for opera Butterfly Lovers: “In one Zhu Ying Tai outfit, one will observe the sheer outer robe cut in a baju panjang style. It is worn with a Ming Dynasty-style hanfu top with a batik full skirt.”
Designer Richard Kent, on the 13m-tall industrial set for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was assembled in Malaysia: “We looked at the oil refineries on the Singapore coast as inspiration. It helped us create a human world where the audience instantly felt ill at ease.”
2:22’s sound designer Daniel Wong: “Careful attention was paid to the subtlest cues, such as ensuring that the footsteps going up the staircase matched the footwear and stride of each character, or the sound of rain that became slightly muted when the doors were closed.”
Full list of nominees:
Production of the Year
Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes, Checkpoint Theatre
Doubt: A Parable, Pangdemonium
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Singapore Theatre Company
G*d Is A Woman, Wild Rice
Best Actor
Ghafir Akbar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Chua Enlai, Snow White
Dharshan Nathan, Crack The Case: Mindhunter
Sebastian Tan, Broadway Beng Growing Gold
Best Actress
Asnida Daud, Air Da Tohor
Joanna Dong, The Soldier And His Virtuous Wife
Sharda Harrison, People, Places &Things
Jada, Potong
Sindhura Kalidas, Psychob***h
Neo Swee Lin, Doubt: A Parable
Best Ensemble
Twin Murder In The Green Mansion, Agam Theatre Lab
Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes, Checkpoint Theatre
Into The Woods, Pangdemonium
Four Horse Road, The Theatre Practice
G*d Is A Woman, Wild Rice
Hotel, Wild Rice
Best Director
Subramanian Ganesh and Karthikeyan Somasundram, Twin Murder In The Green Mansion
Timothy Koh, Doubt: A Parable
Kuo Jian Hong, Four Horse Road
Huzir Sulaiman, Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes
Pam Oei, Psychob***h
Best Costume
Leonard Augustine Choo, An Inspector Calls
Richard Kent, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Max Tan, Four Horse Road
Max Tan, Mari Kita Main Wayang
Max Tan, Butterfly Lovers
Best Sound
Ctrl Fre@k – Lee Yew Jin, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Jing Ng, Pompeii
Serene Tan (Stan), Parting in The Puppets Are Alright
Daniel Wong, 2:22
Mervin Wong, Crack The Case: Mindhunter
Best Set
Eucien Chia, Doubt
Eucien Chia, Into The Woods
Richard Kent, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Lim Keng San, Twin Murder In The Green Mansion
Wong Chee Wai, An Inspector Calls
Best Original Script
Amanda Chong, Psychob***h
Lucas Ho, Tender Submission
Joel Tan, G*d Is A Woman
Joel Tan, The Butterfly Lovers
Myle Yan Tay, Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes
Best Multimedia
K. Rajagopal and Low Wee Cheng, Pompeii
Brian Gothong Tan, Angel Island
Brian Gothong Tan, King
Genevieve Peck, People, Places & Things
Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, Ctrl Fre@k was listed as a nominee for Best Multimedia for Pompeii. This has been updated to reflect the bigger roles played by K. Rajagopal and Low Wee Cheng.
