The cost of being honest

THERE are some roles all great actors yearn to play: Hamlet, Oedipus, Stanley Kowalski, Lear, Macbeth. "And, in my case, Lady Macbeth too," Ivan Heng says, only half-jokingly.

And then there's Dr Thomas Stockmann, a scientist so brutally honest and uncompromising that society views him as a threat to its peace and prosperity.

"But that is precisely what makes him such a challenge to play. He's not simply a hero. He's a complex character," says Heng as he gears himself up for the lead in Henrik Ibsen's classic Public Enemy.