Lush Life
Victoria Theatre, Singapore International Festival of Arts, May 29-30 2026.
Director: Keng Sen Ong. Production Design: Elizabeth Mak.
Costume Design: Thomas Wee. Sound Design: Shah Tahir.
https://sifa.sg/plan-your-visit/all-programmes/programme-details/festival-stage/lush-life
Photographers: Tiny Big Picture, Tan Ngiap Heng, DWKM
“Lush Life draws from pop art, surrealism, Dutch vanitas painting, the visual worlds of Magritte, Warhol, and Grace Jones’s legendary Island Life cover. But most of all, it draws from the album covers of Jacintha and Dick Lee themselves; those elaborate, fantastical images that were conceptual artworks in their own right. Under production designer Elizabeth Mak’s visual imagination, these images become the grammar of the show: surreal, lush, extravagant, and emotionally serious. ”
“Elizabeth Mak’s production design conjures entire emotional registers out of projected light and collaged imagery. ”
“Imagery of busts floating at sea and concealed faces gazing at each other nods to Magritte’s The Lovers. And when Jacintha sings Where’s My Baby, the projections show miniature Dick Lees raining gently from the sky: funny, melancholic, and stranger than anything you expect from a show with the word “documentary” attached to it. The sequence understands that the most formally surreal art can sometimes be the most emotionally accurate.”
