Doreen Toh in ‘My Father The AI Machine’ / Photo: Benson Lim / Courtesy of The Finger Players

The Puppets are Alright
The Finger Players
26 February 2023
Drama Centre Black Box 
22–26 February 2023

In my email interview with the creatives of The Puppets are Alright, the common theme of working towards a piece in which the puppet is crucial to the story-telling came up consistently. 

The puppets used in the triple-bill are created by Sim Xin Feng, Loo An Ni, and Marilyn Ang during their respective year-long residencies at The Maker’s Lab. 

When the audience enters the black box, they will see Sim Xin Feng’s puppet seated at the dining table, facing them directly. It is the size of a large doll, its head resembling a bald, bespectacled, middle-aged man. 

With its big eyes and indecipherable mouth, it has an enigmatic presence throughout My Father The AI Machine. In the piece, it is a machine which supposedly contains the brainwaves and memories of a deceased man, an innovation by the government-backed Revive the Dead Programme.

The man’s wife (Doreen Toh) treats it like her actual husband, and takes on multiple jobs, hoping to eventually afford the upgrades to make this machine more human-like. This leaves the son (Neo Hai Bin) contending with treating the machine like his father, and not having a proper relationship with his mother.

Neo Hai Bin plays the son who is unwilling to treat the machine as his father
Photo: Benson Lim / Courtesy of The Finger Players

With its movable eyes, controlled by a joystick, and a button at the mouth to print ten words at a time on a ticker tape, dispensed through its chest, the puppet is not completely inanimate, but hardly human. 

The liminality of the puppet is the crux of this poignant human drama in which one is clinging on to what is lost at the unknowing expense of slowly losing what one has.

Playwright Chong Tze Chien keeps the plot and world-building of a near future simple, which allows us to focus on the human drama. Unfortunately, Liew Jia Yi’s direction and the performance by the actors is just short of realising the drama to its fullest potential. 

For a woman who desperately wants to keep her husband alive, and treats the machine as her husband, Doreen Toh is slightly tentative in handling the puppet as they slow dance to the couple’s favourite song. Even when the son threatens to destroy the machine, her desperate pleas do not feel like her son has just threatened to kill his father with a long knife in hand. 

At the end of the play, when the son makes an irrational decision that contradicts his previous beliefs, Neo Hai Bin portrays the son to make that decision a little too easily. 

That said, the play is engaging and touches on a very human struggle. 

Alvin Chiam plays a man who is haunted by the spectre of his wife / Photo: Benson Lim / Courtesy of The Finger Players

As a counterpoint to the opening piece, Loo An Ni’s puppet in Parting only appears in the middle of the piece. Instead of using the original puppets she created for her residency, she created a new one based on insights gained from her research into modularity. 

While I am slightly disappointed as she is modest in her ambitions with the life-sized female mannequin with detachable limbs,—as opposed to her original interests in exoskeletons and modularity—the puppet serves as the spectre that confronts us with our sins. 

In this non-verbal piece conceived and directed by Oliver Chong, a man (Alvin Chiam) writes a parting letter to his wife and removes his wedding ring. Three creatures (Angelina Chandra, Jo Kwek, Rachel Nip) dressed in black appear and they seem to represent the man’s personal demons. As they scamper and scramble about the room to frolic and cause mischief, the man gets increasingly affected.

The timing between the creatures shifting the body parts of the puppet, and the man wondering they are constantly being misplaced, is incredibly taut. This brings out a sense of dark humour. We get the horror trope of things moving about and seeing the dark forces causing mischief, while also getting the comedic element of child-like creatures playing pranks.

The creatures (Angelina Chandra, Jo Kwek, Rachel Nip) seem to represent the man’s personal demons
Photo: Benson Lim / Courtesy of The Finger Players

Chiam’s slightly understated approach is a nice touch as this contrasts with the creatures suggests how he is trying to control what is going on internally as manifested by the creatures on stage.

The creatures also double as puppeteers. When the mannequin is assembled, it becomes the spectre of the man’s wife, and he is confronted with what he did. As the ultimate act is committed, the puppet is crucial in showing how violent we can be. This may be a little too uncomfortable if such violence is enacted on a human actor. 

The promotional materials describe this piece as “high octane”, but the initial menacing quality of the piece is not ramped up towards the climax. While one might worry about how much the audience can take, I think there is still more room to push this further. 

Ian Tan handles and gives voice to the rod puppet, Paul. T. Saitharan plays Paul’s father
Photo: Benson Lim / Courtesy of The Finger Players

The Bench brings us back to familiar ground with Marilyn Ang’s rod puppet which plays the son, Paul, whose relationship with his father (T. Sasitharan) is strained.

Having lost his wife, the father has to raise his son alone and tries to connect with him by creating an environment that the father thinks is beautiful—building a bench that can play sounds when touching different parts of it, and telling him stories or quotes by luminaries of the past whenever Paul needs some guidance. 

Paul drifts from his father as he tires of the cryptic wisdom provided by his father, which does not seem to help him navigate through the thickets of life. 

In this wistful play, written by Ellison Tan and directed by Myra Loke, we see Paul grow from an infant to a young adult through the sensitive puppeteering and line delivery by Ian Tan. 

One of the key features in Marilyn Ang’s design of Paul is a mechanism in the chest which allows it to emit bubbles. At a few points in the play, we see Paul emitting a stream of bubbles from his chest, as if he is pouring his heart out. Just like the stories and quotes from his father, they appear beautiful, but are fleeting and do not exist long enough for a connection to be made. 

Delicate performances from T. Sasitharan and Ian Tan / Photo: Benson Lim / Courtesy of The Finger Players

T. Sasitharan, as Paul’s father, has an unmistaken presence and one could listen to him tell stories for hours. Despite him likening acting with and reacting to puppets as a high-wire act sans safety net, he does it effortlessly.

However, even when the relationship is fraying, the father still resorts to quotes and anecdotes to communicate with his son. One wishes that the audience with some sort of indication—either through the text or direction—as to why the father could not speak from the heart, despite being very eloquent in relaying wisdom from the past.

With a few beautiful moments sprinkled in the piece, which brings out Marilyn Ang’s exploration of tactility and bubbles, the piece is an elegy of father-son relationships, and the missed opportunities for connection. 

Despite needing a few tweaks, everyone involved in the triple-bill must be congratulated for creating works that incorporate the puppets in an organic way, while throwing humanity’s needs, desires, and frailties into sharper relief. 

Other Reviews

“Theatre review: The Puppets Are Alright is sophisticated storytelling about grief and love” by Charmaine Lim, The Straits Times Life! (Review is behind a paywall.)

“To Make is To Care” by Lee Shu Yu, harmonicstagebeams

“The Puppets Are Alright” by The Finger Players—and I know the outgoing artistic directors will be alright too” by Corrie Tan, the intimate critic

“Response: Alex Li on The Puppets Are Alright by Ellison Tan, Oliver Chong, and Chong Tze Chien (The Finger Players)” by Alex Li, Critics Circle Blog

Further Reading

[Interview] Creatives shed light on ‘The Puppets are Alright’ by The Finger Players

[Interview] Ellison Tan and Myra Loke celebrate their stint as co-artistic directors of The Finger Players with The Puppets are Alright

Programme booklet of The Puppets are Alright