Kusu Island

The Fool Theatre
Drama Centre Black Box
Friday, 2.30pm

The origin myth of Kusu Island – that a tortoise transformed itself into an island to rescue two shipwrecked sailors – is fleshed out with environmental and familial themes in The Fool Theatre’s Mandarin-language musical.

It does not say anything particularly new about maternal love or mother nature, but the breezy hour-long show animates an old local myth with contemporary concerns for younger audiences.

In playwright Terence Chan’s script, the relationship between the turtle and the sailors is imagined as an initially antagonistic one.

An anthropomorphised mother turtle (Misha Paule Tan) loses her unhatched child to two fishermen – Xiao Yu (Clement Yeo) and Yu Ren (Kenji Ng) – intending to eat or sell the egg.

Crabbie (Danica Elisha Chan), the turtle’s comical crustacean friend, makes pointed statements about the humans’ role in habitat destruction.

She doles out witty lines while playing the castanets and even riffs off Taiwanese pop diva A-mei’s ballad Listen To The Sea as she warns her friend of being too helpful.

But the mother turtle finds it difficult not to feel an affinity with Xiao Yu, who is also someone else’s son as well as a father who sings longingly about his child at home.

With Cho Jung-woo’s melodious score, the more woeful ballads can sometimes stir the heart although the upbeat numbers feel lethargic and lack the same verve.

Set designers Xavier Kang – who is also Kusu Island’s director – and Chen Guochang have constructed a beautiful and simple set with plastic and other waste that reminds audiences of theatre’s magic as each little paper turtle crawls out from the set.

Lighting designer Alberta Wileo, who won Best Lighting at The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards 2023, conjures a palette of sensations from beach to sunlight to storm that draws oohs and aahs from the primary-school audience.

Kusu Island is a tale of nature’s generosity and mankind’s selfishness, a classic opposition that is at the heart of these precarious times for the planet.

A deeper exploration of this simple binary might have made for a more interesting story, but the message of this one is clear and direct: One should love the environment the way one loves one’s kin.

In this script with an ecological lesson, the myth of Kusu Island’s founding becomes the story of man’s entanglement with the environment.

Book It/Kusu Island

Where: Drama Centre Black Box, 100 Victoria Street
When: Till July 16; Tuesdays to Thursdays and Sundays, 2.30pm; Fridays and Saturdays, 2.30 and 7.30pm
Admission: $38.50
Info: str.sg/iUdF