State of the Arts: April 11 to 18

SINGAPORE — The main cast of The LKY Musical was announced. Acting alongside Adrian Pang, who was previously announced to play the title role of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, will be Sharon Au, who plays Mdm Kwa Geok Choo. Newbie Benjamin Chow is set to play opposition politician Lim Chin Siong while Broadway Beng Sebastian Tan will take on the role of the rickshaw puller who saved Mr Lee’s life during World War II. Elsewhere, the year’s first edition of the Affordable Art Fair Singapore opened; this year’s President’s Young Talents artist list was announced (Ang Song Ming, Bani Haykal, Ezzam Rahman, Loo Zihan and Ong Kian Peng); online literary journal Asymptote received the International Literary Translation Initiative Award at the 2015 London Book Fair; the National Heritage Board’s two-month archaeological excavation at Empress Place yielded two and a half tonnes of artefacts; and news that a third of the galleries at Gillman Barracks have decided not to renew their leases prompted much discussion in the arts community. Ken Kwek’s Unlucky Plaza opened in cinemas while chef-musician Lee Chin Sin won at MediaCorp’s SG50: The Gift Of Song for These Are The Days. On a somber note, Singapore Lyric Opera’s founding chairperson, Leow Siak Fah, passed away in Germany at the age of 75. MAYO MARTIN