‘The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage,’ wrote English critic Cyril Connolly. It was partly this crippling sense of alienation that spurred Oliver Chong to write his latest play. As its title suggests, Pinocchio’s Complex – which took Chong four months to write – was also inspired by the adventures of a talking marionette in Italian author Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel for children. It will be staged by The Finger Players, a local group known for its inventive brand of puppet theatre. 

The performers in this production, however, will not be handling any puppets, which the company usually makes from scratch. Instead, Pinocchio will be played by actress Jo Kwek, 30. ‘A puppet is basically anything inanimate that can be animated by a puppeteer, so here the actor’s limbs and body serve that purpose,’ explains Chong, 31, who is also directing the show. ‘This is to achieve hyper-reality by further alienating the body.’ 

It is this absurdist blurring of reality and fantasy that marks Pinocchio’s Complex, which explores the ‘destructive relationship’ between the curious marionette and his creator-father, a poor, lonely woodcarver. Chong, who made his directorial debut with 2006’s I’m Just a Piano Teacher, first read the original tale when he was ten. Revisiting it drew him to the story’s darker corners – such as the episode in which bandits hang the puppet- boy in a tree – and led him to question the point of being human. His version is decidedly not for children. 

‘Pinocchio’s struggle between being bad and being good sums up our instinctive anxieties about growing up, and encourages us to refl ect on just who the puppets really are,’ Chong observes. ‘Perhaps, we are only as real as we think we are.’

More information about Pinocchio's Complex.