Theatre 2026: Punch - A New Musical @ Factory Theatre

We have been following musical composer and performer Andrew Seok on Instagram since we watched and thoroughly enjoyed his show “Almost Ever After” at last year’s Toronto Fringe Festival. That show was presented “in concert” with performers singing in front of microphones and featured five interconnecting love stories inspired by movies such as Love Actually.  His latest endeavour, titled “Punch: A New Musical”, is presented in the same way but differs wildly in theme and tone.

The plot is plucked from a heartwarming real-life situation where a baby macaque monkey in a Japanese zoo was abandoned by his mother shortly after his birth in July 2025.  Given the name “Punch” by a pair of zookeepers who raised and bottle-fed him for six months, the baby macaque struggled when he was finally returned to Monkey Mountain to reintegrate with the other macaque monkeys. The other monkeys bullied and ostracized Punch, leaving him feeling alone and isolated. To provide him with some comfort and companionship, zoo officials gave Punch an orange orangutan plushie from IKEA, which he immediately took to and considered his surrogate mother. The story went viral with videos of Punch dragging around and cuddling this stuffed animal, which the public soon dubbed “Oran-Mama”. Eventually, Punch learned to socialize and was accepted by the other monkeys. Today he is thriving and relies on the stuffed animal much less than before.

Andrew Seok learned of this story through his girlfriend and was inspired to write a musical about this tale. At the start of the show, baby Punch is represented by a tiny plush monkey so that it could be cradled by its mother as she sings about not knowing how to care for her child, asking why others make it seem so easy, and then by the zookeepers as they debate what to name and how to help Punch. By the time Punch is ready to be integrated with the other monkeys, he is now portrayed by actress Lara Angela Roda, whose big, expressive eyes convey Punch’s confusion over the absence of his mother, and fear when attacked by the other monkeys. They also beam with joy and spunk, especially when interacting with the zookeeper that he thinks of as “Dad”, and once he meets a new friend in the monkey Momo, played by Belinda Corpuz who we previously saw at Soulpepper in “Narnia”. Momo befriends Punch and teaches him the ways of the macaque in terms of showing deference to the elders, grooming, and other appropriate behaviours. Akira, the leader of the monkeys and main aggressor against Punch is played by Seok himself. In the talkback, he indicated that he casts himself in his own musicals when he relates to a role and can’t find another actor who will portray it in the way that he imagines. Renowned Canadian actress and Broadway star Chilina Kennedy plays the narrator who fills in the backstory of Punch and sets up the scenes.

Particularly fitting for a concert-style musical but probably even for a fully produced show, the “costumes” of the actors playing the monkeys merely hint at their animalistic nature through the use of muted brown, beige and grey tones and the textures of the tops or sweaters being worn. Punch is dressed in an oversized grey hoodie to accentuate his relative petiteness while Akira wears a brown jacket with a fur-lined hood which makes him stand out and clearly marks him as the alpha monkey. Seok’s height which towers over the other actors helps as well. This worked out well because dressing in actual monkey suits would have changed the tone of this touching tale. This was the same sartorial choice used in the play Fifteen Dogs when depicting the various breeds of dog. By contrast, the human zookeepers are dressed in matching blue, short-sleeved, collared shirts while the narrator wears a red skirt.  These choices clearly delineate them from the monkeys.

The only other prop on stage is of course the Ikea Monkey that Punch calls “Orange Mama”. The choreography is limited but quite effective. In combat scenes where Punch is attacked, the other monkeys stand in formation and each raises an arm and forms a menacing claw with his hand. When they swipe downwards at Punch and later Momo, all synchronized by sound effects from the orchestra, the victims jerk and wince as if struck although no contact is actually made.

Once again, we were impressed by a work produced by Andrew Seok, especially when we heard during the talkback that he wrote all the songs in less than a month. Even more impressive was how short the rehearsal time was for the actors to learn their parts.  Seok is a very talented composer/lyricist and hopefully one day, he can stage a full production of his works including sets, costumes and choreography. I also wish that his shows could be held in a theatre with better sound system. Inside Factory Theatre’s Main Stage, the voices of the performers and the lyrics they were singing were often muddy and difficult to discern.

I had read in the advertisements for Punch: A New Musical that there was an “opening act” before each performance.  Arriving early to watch this, we were treated to a mini-concert by actor-musician James Daly, apparently a regular in Andrew Seok’s shows. We first encountered Daly as one of the pairs of lovers in Almost Ever After where he also played the trombone when his storyline was not being featured. In this musical, he is part of the small orchestra positioned at the back of the stage, as opposed to being in the cast. For the pre-show concert, he sang a series of torch songs that he wrote, and through banter with the audience, we learned that they were all about ex-girlfriends who broke his heart. Daly was charming and witty and his songs were both funny and touching.  This was a lovely way to settle in before the main attraction.