It’s been a busy couple of years for Frances Lee. Since her splashy debut in Pangdemonium’s Fat Pig, she’s been making waves and winning plaudits in a host of musicals – from Beauty World and Liao Zhai Rocks! to RENT and Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Frances – with her big, beautiful voice – had planned all along to pursue a career in musical theatre.
But that’s not the case. Frances actually graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts in 2014 with a degree in Acting. Monkey Goes West, first staged by W!LD RICE in that same year, was her first musical as a professional actor.
“I love singing,” she declares. “But I was in school for so long, just doing acting, that it wasn’t my focus for a long time.”
Nonetheless, life has a funny way of nudging you onto the path that might just be perfect for you.
“The past two years of my career have made me re-think the kind of artist I want to be,” Frances observes. “Singing came back into focus and I love the challenge of it. So I think I want to work towards that now, towards making myself a better musical theatre performer.”
Later this month, she’ll be recreating the role of Pigsy in Monkey Goes West, a cheeky adaptation of the beloved Chinese fantasy classic. She’s evidently excited by the prospect.
“My favourite character from Journey to the West was actually Pigsy,” she confides with a smile. “As the comic relief, he was always there to make people laugh.”
Indeed, many of the funniest moments in Monkey Goes West come from Pigsy’s undying love of good food and beautiful women. “My character spends a lot of time eating food, thinking about food, chasing women and thinking about women,” laughs Frances.
Look beyond his gluttony and womanising, however, and there is clearly a depth to the character that appeals to her.
“It’s very important for Pigsy to go on this epic journey to the west because, finally, he’s not serving his own needs,” she explains. “He’s helping someone more important than himself – he learns to focus on the bigger picture and the greater good.”
Frances believes that the same hidden depths can be found throughout Monkey Goes West. Peek beneath the colourful, cheerful surface of this pantomime, and you’ll uncover many layers to its plot and characters.
“I think the magic of this story comes in its many heartfelt moments,” she points out. “Our characters are forced to go on a traumatising journey together, but they end up becoming real friends.”
Playing the role of Pigsy is no walk in the park. To do so, Frances has to transform herself physically – apart from holding herself differently when moving about on stage, she must also speak and sing in a lower register.
What worried her the most, however, was whether she was funny enough as Pigsy. “This was my first pantomime,” Frances recalls, “And I was performing alongside the likes of Chua Enlai and Siti Khalijah – pantomime veterans who really know how to get the laughs!”
She credits Broadway Beng Sebastian Tan [a.k.a. Tan Boon Piew] – director of Monkey Goes West and no stranger to the pantomime himself – with raising her game in rehearsals and on stage.
“Ah Piew pulls no punches and he’s obviously an expert on getting the laughs,” she reveals. “If he thinks you can do better and be funnier, he will make sure you get there!”
“I really look up to Ah Piew a lot,” she continues. “I see him as a friend, but also a mentor who helped me to cultivate my comic timing. And because he loves this show so much and is very invested in it, I really want to make him proud!”
Revisiting a show is a luxury actors don’t often get in Singapore. Frances is looking forward to pushing the show and her character to greater heights.
“This may be the same show in many ways, but why not make it better?” she asks. “I’ve watched myself in videos of the first production and I can see many things that I want to improve. So, for every one of us, this is about pushing the show to the next level.”
It’s all in line with the biggest lesson she took home from first performing in Monkey Goes West. “There is never going to be an ‘okay, this is good enough’,” she laughs. ““I’ve learnt to always keep exploring and making things different when it comes to the W!LD RICE pantomime!”
