Dreamscape where nightmares loom

THE plot is forgettable and a tad too long and meandering, but The Fingerplayers' Itsy - The Musicalabout a boy and an evil spider has world-class staging with excellent puppetry effects.

It's just a pity that the story by playwright Chong Tze Chien isn't accessible enough to become a Singapore theatre classic. Maybe it tries to accomplish too much because Chong has tried to weave together several story strands in one (long) play.

A musical in three acts, it starts off endearingly enough as we're introduced to the grandfather (played by Lim Kay Siu) looking for his grandson, Xavier (Oliver Chong) and the nursery rhyme characters he meets along the way, such as Jack and Jill (Tan Shou Chen and Jo Tan respectively), Humpty Dumpty and the three blind mice. They live in fear of being bitten by spiders, which are out to turn humans into zombies and wipe away their memories. In the subsequent acts, it becomes clear that this fairytale-like story is a metaphor for the mind which is plagued b…