Secondary: The Musical asks tough questions of Singapore’s educational system and meritocracy

Secondary: The Musical

Checkpoint Theatre
Victoria Theatre
April 9, 8pm

Is learning about systemic inequality inherently demotivational for students who fall behind from birth? This patient and elegiac look at how the education system treats those who struggle in it asks some tough questions of Singapore’s meritocracy.

In playwright-composer weish’s estimation, teachers and students are not that different – both in a constant striving to live up to the mark, and finding ways to maintain their sense of self in an unforgiving institution.

Secondary: The Musical also asks some very pertinent questions about how youthful idealism withers and dies because of boardroom decisions, and the need for teachers to draw boundaries for self-preservation – and the dangers of doing this by default.

The staff room and the classroom are worlds apart. This layered and stirring story comes together solidly, brought together by weish’s otherworldly music that is as equally amenable to the folksy trot as to the musical howl.

This restaged version of the musical that won Production of the Year at the 2025 Straits Times Life Theatre Awards centres scholar-literature teacher Lilin, played by Genevieve Tan, whose first lyric is a repeated “aiya” – in all its shades of dismissal, nonchalance, fatigue and self-comfort.

She is the teacher assigned to class 3F at the fictional Huxley Secondary School, with its likeable cast of academically and domestically troubled kids. Some are given shorter shrift, but the characterisation centres on a trio of conventional ne’er-do-wells: the rapping Omar (Ramzie Tahar), overextended Ming (Tricia Tan) and loyal Reyansh (Krish Natarajan).

Lilin has big plans for them, teaching them big ideas like “systemic inequality” and “privilege”, believing that this will expand their world. But in this, she comes up against the more seasoned head of department Mandy (Nadya Zaheer) and teachers of more advanced classes leery of her labour, affronted that she is introducing an element of instability in the school’s streaming of students, ultimately beholden to offstage parents who compare notes and demand answers.

Teoh Jun Vinh is the sympathetic mathematics teacher who has found ways to rationalise away extraneous care, perfecting the all-purpose martial arts counter of “What do you think?”

The musical, directed by Checkpoint Theatre co-founder Huzir Sulaiman, handles classroom and meeting room dynamics confidently, with actors getting their accents down pat for a comical representation of Singapore’s varied linguistic landscape, from literature teachers with erratic pronunciations to the context-dependent accent switching painful to the ears of students chafing against class and pretentiousness.

The standout singer here is Zaheer, deputising for the injured Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai and whose every intonation here injects authority and ballast – a grounding tenor. Though it is Tan as Ming who is given the most difficult ask of following weish’s chromatic and jazzy sound in the ethereal register. It is a difficult task she meets, sometimes visibly focusing on hitting weish’s unusual notes, but generally capturing their spirit.

There is real power to the second-half climactic song On Paper, which is tense and rhythmic in the way the ritual of exams is when one stops to think about it – “You may begin. Today, you write your own life. Time’s up. Pens down.”

Choreographer Hafeez Hassan does a wonderful job throughout, but the dancing is especially inspired here. The students roll forward with their heads glued to the table, their exam sheets morbidly plastered to their bodies. Later, it is the teachers’ turn, marking as the students hover over them like invigilators: Exams can be as traumatic for those who do them as for those who teach.

With the publication of sociologist Teo You Yenn’s Unease (2026) critiquing the high-pressure education system and its reproduction of privilege, here is further querying of its shortcomings and contradictions.

In weish’s Gaelic-inspired sonic world, survival in the system is elevated into something epic, at times resembling the funereal wails by an ancient pyre. Within these forces larger than themselves, whether rebirth is possible depends on whether students and teachers can hang on for just a while more.

Book it/Secondary: The Musical

Where: Victoria Theatre, 1 Empress Place
When: Till April 26; 8pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays), 3pm (weekends)
Admission: $95 to $135, eligible for SG Culture Pass credits
Info: checkpoint-theatre.org/event/stm-2026