Singapore Duo at Sydney Fringe: The Happier Place & Pretty Ugly

Anna Sokolova

Sep 5

3 min read

Presented by @singapore.spotlight

Sydney Fringe 2026

The Happier Place

Played at Qtopia The Loading Dock, Sydney, 1-5 September 2026

The review

Set up somewhere in a tall building in Singapore, it is a basic setup of a radio studio. There is an expressive, loud, intentionally dramatic and emotional, eloquent in her snappy calls to her listeners deejay Van, creating her own live morning show.

Wearing somewhat military-looking grey protective zipped suits, noticing but not overreacting - at first - to explosive sounds from outside, Van is prancing along with her jokes, comments, mandatory but hilariously said ads, until Estie, a long-unseen ex bestie, is entering the studio.

Now two characters live there at once, and then another handful are thrown in over the phone or form memories - all played by Jo Tan. Her complex and demanding physical performance yields a crystal-clear, flowing story. The work with accent and voices in this production is incredible.

Van and Estie, who is an activist, a dry, firm, determined woman, are thrown back to remember, reflect, bring up, or try to bury all sorts of past stories again, struggling to reincarnate old friendship with all its sharp edges - one touch, it bleeds.

Their expressive, colourful, dense conversation, half on-air, half private, throws in everything. AI, pollution, radiation, epidemic of horrific sudden deaths - dematerialisation, the future of humankind, and a desperate attempt to fix something, or let it go, living lightly with music and dead jokes, when all is doomed. It is fun with a good pinch of fear.

It feels like a bad dream, a clash of reality and a nightmare, loneliness or a crowd outside, made-up calls or real connections, death or a confetti joke - and it is left to be untangled for the audience.

There are a lot of hints of what is really happening, but never a final resolution - a sense one gets watching and reading all sorts of news and social media, feeling sanity is vanishing.

This work is brilliant and alarmingly timely, because what shall one do to stay coherent nowadays is a very, very good question.

Creative team and Cast

Playwright/Performer – @Jo Tan

Director – Lim Shien Hian @shienofhian

Assistant Stage Manager – Edward Choy

Photo by me

Pretty Ugly

Played at Qtopia The Substation, Sydney, 1-5 September 2026

The review

The Substation @qtopia_sydney is a small cube-shaped repurposed industrial underground building, where tall concrete walls are left bare, covered with graffiti, and people enter via narrow stairs from the top.

The space is charismatic and quite demanding, pushing a performer into a spotlight without backing them up.

Theo Chen, a Singaporean performer currently based in London, created his show as a raw, direct conversation to an audience in this chamber space.

A big lover of musicals and an excellent singer, they travel back through the songs, accompanied by an excellent pianist.

Theo speaks without keeping a precise timeline about childhood, teenage years, and beyond, in a sequence of songs.

Each one is a reminder, an anchor to something from the past. Beautifully presenting themselves in a classy velvet or silk dress and high heels, Theo’s intentional simplicity in delivery builds a trustworthy and vulnerable connection with people watching him.

And then they do something - be there to experience that - which brings the evening to the next level. They flip it all, for a little time, converting an audience into a circle of not-so-strangers, and again, with music and a song, give a great deal of a gift - reversing time and returning one to their own happy moments from the deep past, giving several minutes of true happiness.