The Fourth Trimester (2025)
Faith Ng’s beloved The Fourth Trimester returns in November, having clinched Production of the Year and Best Original Script at the 2023 ST Life Theatre Awards. This compelling play profoundly encapsulates the experience of life and parenthood in Singapore, and is essential viewing for all.
Touted as a “a must-watch for all sorts of people” (The Straits Times), The Fourth Trimester runs from 20–30 November 2025.
The Fourth Trimester is Culture Pass eligible! Redeem your $100 credits here for this production!
The first month is always the roughest.
Exhausted from battling sleepless nights and endless diaper changes, first-time parents Samantha and Aaron find themselves overwhelmed caring for their newborn. Close friends rally around them in support, but picture-perfect couple Lisa and Daniel are beginning to feel the strain of family life on their relationship, while Ann yearns for a space of her own. Next door, newlyweds Sofia and Johan deal with the pressures of starting a family. Faced with the tangle of life and its hurdles, ‘adulting’ has never seemed so complicated.
Incredibly rich, humorous and compassionate, The Fourth Trimester is achingly familiar in its portrayal of family life and all its uncertainties. With sensitive, nuanced direction by Claire Wong and insightful dramaturgy by Huzir Sulaiman, Faith Ng’s work casts a refreshing and timely light on parenthood, identity, and what it means to be happy in contemporary Singapore.
Expect the unexpected in this hopeful and heartfelt ode to the places we call home, and the people we choose as family.
Join us at The Fourth Trimester Gala and The Fourth Trimester Fundraiser Night for an intimate and delightful time at the theatre, and to champion Checkpoint Theatre’s telling of original Singapore stories — click here for more information!
Access Information
The following shows will be captioned performances:
• Sat 22 Nov, 2:30pm
• Wed 26 Nov, 8pm
The performance on Fri 28 Nov, 8pm includes Singapore Sign Language interpretation and will also be captioned.
Please book seats within the following sections for the best view of the captions and interpretation:
• D8 to D22
• E8 to E22
• F8 to F22
Limited wheelchair seating is available in Row L. Please call the SISTIC hotline at 6348 5555 to book wheelchair seats.
Creative Team
- Playwright
Faith Ng
- Director
Claire Wong
- Dramaturg
Huzir Sulaiman
- Cast
Isabella Chiam
Joshua Lim
Julie Wee
Hang Qian Chou
Rusydina Afiqah
Wan Ahmad
Liz Sergeant Tan
Reviews
- Press
The Fourth Trimester is a must-watch play about parenthood [...]
[Faith] Ng's script is so full of minutely observed detail that it feels lived-in, like Petrina Dawn Tan's cluttered set for Sam and Aaron's three-room Housing Board flat, with clothes and baby things strewn over every available surface. […] The cast is strong across the board, held together by [Isabella] Chiam's relatable performance... [...]
The Fourth Trimester is a must-watch for all sorts of people. Men should see it, if only to realise the invisible labour their wives and mothers have borne this whole time. Mothers will see their struggles reflected on the stage; women who have yet to have children will have a lot to mull over.
THE STRAITS TIMES, SG
Pandemic Era's First Essential Singapore Play [...]
The rhythms and routines of daily life in Singapore rarely look more genuine than when they're depicted by playwright Faith Ng. Her new play, The Fourth Trimester, is her most ambitious and articulate yet.
It's the first essential Singapore play to emerge from the pandemic era that honestly deals with our contemporary realities. […] Together with Ng's previous play 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘭, The Fourth Trimester places Ng in the pantheon of great Singaporean feminist playwrights... [...]
The performances are uniformly strong, as are the technical designs. There is so much in The Fourth Trimester that women can identify with. But for Singaporean men, it is essential viewing, because it peels back the rug under which so much injustice towards women here has been swept for so long.
The Business Times, SG
Every play of Faith Ng's continues her quiet, tender and canny dissection of Singaporean life. The Fourth Trimester, presented by [Checkpoint Theatre] and directed by [Claire Wong], is no exception. It offers an unflinching look at millennial parenthood and the pressures of "adulting" in modern Singapore, whether one chooses a life of committed coupledom or strident singlehood. I see shades of Faith's earlier plays beautifully teased out in this rich, complex narrative: strong female friendships, strained marriages and the eternal pressure to match up to societal expectations. It's a play that triggers multiple emotions at once by holding you ever so tenderly in its grasp. This is essential viewing for anyone navigating family life in Singapore.
Naeem Kapadia