68 malaysia tatler. august 2019
Y
oung cecilia leong-
Faulkner always knew
she was different from
her peers. Ambitious,
broad-minded and
quietly resilient
beneath her calm-and-
collected exterior, Cecilia’s instant connection
to the dazzling world of theatre was fi rst
realised when she was just a student in
London who had just chanced upon the stage
musical La Cage aux Folles one evening. “The
lyrics of one of the songs they sang in that
musical sticks with me till today,” Cecilia says.
“I am what I am...I am my own creation...” she
sings gently, segueing back into conversation
without missing a beat.
“That’s just a small example of how
a song can impact you. At the time, I
embraced it. I’ve always felt I was different
and independent-
minded from a very
young age.” Together
with her thespian
ex-husband John
Faulkner, she founded
the British Theatre
Playhouse in Singapore in 2004, a theatre
company that specialises in staging West
End productions from London in Singapore,
Malaysia and other countries in the region.
In her role as the British Theatre
Playhouse’s managing director, she’s had
the opportunity to work with the most
accomplished stage actors from West End,
from Robin Kermode who starred alongside
Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady to Hollywood
actress Jane Seymour.
“When we got the rights to produce
Nöel Coward’s play, The Vortex, we needed
someone to play the lead. I still can’t believe
that we managed to snag Jane to come and
perform in the show,” says Cecilia. “Can you
imagine? A serious Hollywood actress and
Golden Globe winner working with us for
more than three weeks in Singapore. We gotTania Jayatilaka learns how Cecilia Leong-Faulkner’s
passion for London’s West End has revitalised
Kuala Lumpur’s own theatre scene“The arts stretch our
imagination, that’s why it
will always be relevant”
All For the Show
along well; underneath it all, she was a
very real person,” Cecilia recalls.
The British Theatre Playhouse has
produced sold-out shows like From a Jack
to King, How the Other Half Loves and
Yes, Prime Minister, attended by the cream
of Malaysian and Singaporean society—
that includes members of Malaysian royalty
like Tunku Dara Naquiah and Tunku Dato’
Seri Utama Naquiyuddin, the late former
Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew
as well as Malaysian Prime Minister Tun
Mahathir Mohammad.
In 2013, Agatha Christie’s world-famous
play The Mousetrap was staged in Malaysia
for the fi rst time, produced by John Faulkner
and Cecilia Leong-Faulkner and featuring a
British cast that included West End actors.
“From a producer’s point of view,
each show presents a different challenge,”
Cecilia shares.
“The Mousetrap
involved recreating
that entire set,
getting the
costumes perfect
and staging
the show in Kuala Lumpur as well as in
Bangkok and other countries. The logistics
alone was no easy task.”
Balancing between producing shows,
organising charity galas and fl ying a cast
of international actors from one end of the
world to another, Cecilia counts herself lucky
to have the energy that she does, and utilises
what spare time she has to travel the world.
“There’s no running from all the challenges
of the job. For starters, you need to be a
very calm and organised person, someone
who takes shock well, because disasters can
happen anytime! I’d like to think I’m a ‘shock
absorber,’ with all the things we’ve had to go
through in past years.” Cecilia laughs heartily,
full of the quiet confi dence of someone who’s
seen the worst and still kept it all together
through to the last curtain call.FACES | CLOSE-UP^