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.

Theatre 2026: Primary Trust @ Crow's Theatre

Primary Trust, the last show of Crow’s Theatre’s 2025/26 season, is a touching tale of a lonely, socially awkward 38-year-old man named Kenneth, who deals with the childhood trauma of being orphaned at a young age after the death of his mother by forming a consistent routine which he has stuck to for over two decades. This involves working at an old bookstore, followed by Happy Hour Mai Tai cocktails and snacks at his favourite joint “Wally’s”, which is the last tiki bar in a fictional small-town just outside of Rochester, New York. We watch him follow his regime, signaled by a loud “ding” (like the sound made by a call bell) to mark the repetition of each day. He has a second coping method that takes a few scenes to become apparent, although the clues are there from the start.

Kenneth’s structured life is turned upside down when the owner of the bookstore decides to sell and move to Arizona for health reasons. Suddenly unemployed and cast adrift, Kenneth’s turmoil is punctuated by more frequent dings. Forced out of his comfort zone, he slowly learns to reintegrate with the real world, landing a job as a teller in the bank “Primary Trust”, the competitor to the bank that his mother used to work at, and even more slowly learning how to form friendships. It makes me wonder if “Primary Trust” has additional meaning than just the name of the bank but rather reflects Kenneth’s journey to learn to trust new people outside of his limited world.

The play is powered by the star performance by actor Durae McFarlane, who we first encountered in Crow Theatre’s 2019 production of Annie Baker’s play “The Flick”.  As Kenneth, McFarlane’s smile lights up the entire stage when he is happy and contorts in agony when he is distressed.  What makes this play special is the way that it eschews typical tropes including the stereotypical jock-bully or a forced romance. Instead, we get a quiet, heartfelt depiction of one man’s introspection as he searches for connection and belonging.

This has been the first show that we watched in a while at one of Crow’s Theatre’s flexibly configurable spaces where the stage was set up with stadium seating. While this is typical for most other theatres, it felt almost jarring at Crow’s where a thrust (3-sided) or in-the-round seating has become more of the norm.  The main set pieces include the run-down looking building representing the old bookstore, the structure with a lit-up neon sign and fringe curtain in the entrance that becomes Wally’s Tiki Bar, and a third building tucked behind that only revealed the letters “UST” from our seats which turned out to be the Primary Trust bank. Seating for the tiki bar and a teller’s counter were also pushed onto and off the stage as the scenes changed. But what caught my eye was a stoplight mounted high up on the right side of the stage. The light went from green to yellow to red as the show was about to start, possibly acting as a visual cue to the audience to take their seats.  Then throughout the show, the lights rotated between green, red and off.  It is possible that this was just used as lighting for the stage, but I became fixated on wondering if there was more meaning to the colours being used.  I was probably just overthinking things and after a while, I became so engrossed in the story that I stopped noticing.

I am finding that so many of the plays being mounted these days are emotionally taxing dramas dealing with trauma, grief, mental illness, and bleak or even horrific existences. This is reflected in the audience advisory section in the programme for each play that we watch.  The list seems to get longer and longer.  While by no means a comedy, the advisory for this play is relatively mild (mature language and themes, descriptions of childhood trauma, simulated smoking and heavy alcohol consumption). You find yourself rooting for this character, empathizing in his despair and cheering for his successes. From that respect, I thoroughly enjoyed this play but I still long for a straight-out comedy to help transport me from the depressing global state of our world today.

For each play, the lobby bar at Crow’s Theatre comes up with one or more “signature drinks” that reflect on the theme or content of show.  For Primary Trust, that drink was integral to the plot, and so, the Mai Thai was on sale. Rich ordered one and said it was a good one!