Darren Yap

ZOMBIE! THE MUSICAL

Hayes Theatre

Genre-mashing parody of Broadway tunes and 90s culture ... lashings of camp gore and a twinkling sharp eye to societal roles, all driven along by a big ol’ beating undead heart, Zombie! The Musical is a giddy farce to feast on.

Sydney Morning Herald, Kate Prentergast, 2024

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Zombie! proves to be most satisfying, even if its concluding moments do go overboard with its intentional cheesiness. Darren Yap does wonderfully as director of the show, turning every moment into a joke, and making every joke absolutely hilarious.

Suzy Goes Sees 16th March, 2024

Murphy’s broad comedic vision is lovingly realised by Darren Yap’s direction, making the tiny Hayes Theatre stage feel like it’s filled with a cast of thousands ... Zombie! The Musical is filled with talent, laughs, and plenty of blood and gore. It has all the right ingredients for an extravagant night out at the theatre.

Time Out, Charlotte Smee, 2024

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Be afraid, be very afraid ... of being completely blown away ... diabolically witty, devilishly funny, demonically clever and frightfully entertaining ... the success of this production is the result of a clearly inspired, cohesive creative team. Darren Yap, the director, orchestrates his cast so that each has brilliant solo moments but also work harmoniously, in counterpoint.

City Hub, Rita Bratovich, March 16, 2024

Darren Yap directs a slick production on Nick Fry’s vibrant, flexible set. Zombie! The Musical is an exuberant, refreshingly original new Australian musical with plenty of bite.

Limelight, Jo Liston, 15th March, 2024

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

CLYDES

Ensemble Theatre

Ebony Vagulans (Letitia), Gabriel Alvarado (Rafael) and Aaron Tsindos are all admirably cast in director Darren Yap’s production, with set designer Simone Romaniuk creating the kitchen that houses dreams of lobster sandwiches with caramelised fennel, and where tuna melts are made.

Sydney Morning Herald, John Shand

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Darren Yap moves his characters around this confined space ... making excellent use of the small stage of the Ensemble – and of the play’s setting to maximum effect.

City Hub, Irina Dunn , 2023

Darren Yap's' attentive direction of the piece ensures that the countless meaningful morsels of Nottage’s script, are given opportunity to resonate ... the human authenticity Yap is able to depict, is certainly convincing.

Suzy Goes Sees, 2023

Director Darren Yap brings his master chef hat to the production by casting an ensemble of actors who blend well together while being able to comfortably embody their roles.

Theatre Now, Fiona Barker

THE ONE

A well-realised production and an excellent night at the theatre. A visually enchanting work ... and a set that precisely echoes the interior design of an 80s suburban Chinese restaurant.

Arts Hub

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Guaranteed to make you cackle with joy.

Limelight Magazine

A potent mix of exuberant comedy and moving insight into the challenges of being Eurasian in contemporary Australia.

South Sydney Herald

THE LAST FIVE YEARS

La Boite Theatre

The Last Five Years brought to life the tumultuous love story of Jamie and Cathy ... Challenging stereotypes, encouraging creativity and embracing musical expression, director Darren Yap brought the heartfelt story to life with startling clarity.

Theatre Haus by Yasmin Elahi, 2022

Director Darren Yap played so beautifully with the moments of looking, longing and near misses. In each song there was always a character longing for a glance, a look, a touch or an echo. And that glance, look, touch or echo was never received ... intimate yet also dynamic ... two individuals moving through time. Both together, yet also separated.

Never Ever Happens in Brisbane Virag Bombay, 2022

The Last Five Years makes a compelling case that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. And after two years of missed connections and enforced isolations, maybe even a sad love story is better than no love story at all.

The AU review Jodie Sloan

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐1/2

a dynamic, contemporary and poignant play, with Director Darren Yap deftly shaping the complexities of the one-man show with tenderness and subtlety. Yap says "I've never really told a story this close to my heart and my DNA" and describes the piece "as a love letter to his father" ... A sprawling, timeless, coming-of-age story.

Broadway World by Stephi Wild, 2022

JESUS WANTS ME
FOR A SUNBEAM

Belvoir Street Theatre

Let’s start with the superlatives: This is an extraordinarily thought-provoking work, crafted cleverly by writer Steve Rodgers from the novella written by Peter Goldsworthy. It is sensitively and intelligently directed by Darren Yap with moving performances by truly superb actors, on a striking, stylised set.

performing.artshub.com.au
by Dennis Clements

Every once in a while, a production comes along that is so wholesome, nay faultless, that I am left lost for words. Director Darren Yap keeps the pace and sets the tone for this work. There is simply no other way to describe Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam other than MUST SEE theatre.

artsreview.com.au

Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam takes a very unusual position on love, life and death. The characters sketched are quite specific in their views on religion and law.

broadwayworld.com BWW-REVIEW

DOUBLE DELICIOUS

Carriageworks

A lush and evocative series of skilfully narrated performances, tantalising all the senses whilst also delivering moments of real human connection.

Cara Anderson, Limelight Magazine

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐1/2

Double Delicious was a mouth-watering night of great food and banter - a flavourful blend of the best things about food and theatre. Yum!

Natalie Salvo, The AU Review

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐1/2

Original concept creator Annette Shun Wah and director Darren Yap keep a tight handle on these five tales, and bring an appropriate theatricality to the proceedings.

Ben Neutze, Time Out

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

A thoroughly delightful celebration of a culinary coming of age.

Reviews By Judith

Double Delicious really is a theatre experience for all the senses. Five wonderful storytellers take turns bringing to life a tale from their past, all while slicing, dicing and enticing.

Alana Kaye, Theatre Now

JESUS WANTS ME
FOR A SUNBEAM

National Theatre of Parramatta

This is potent work, it plays with such heartbreaking conviction that you feel it shake the room to its core.

John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐1/2

Director Darren Yap extracts the essentials with clean and clear staging. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam is theatre with a tender heart and a hard head, confronting, conflicting, complex and compelling.

Richard Cotter, Australian Stage,
23rd October, 2018

Darren Yap's command of how much to show, how far to go, is indicative of careful character development and judicially guided direction.

Carol Wimmer, Stage Whispers

MIRACLE CITY

Hayes Theatre

This born-again piece of musical theatre is dazzlingly entertaining, and many will find its ending surprisingly raw and achingly sad.

Sydney Morning Herald, John Shand

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Glory hallelujah! Miracle City has been resurrected ... Lambert and Enright's songs are heaven, absolute crucial to the show's tight-rope between satire and seduction.

Deborah Jones, The Australian

Miracle City feels fresh, heartbreaking and genuinely surprising

Polly Simmons, The Daily Telegraph

Miracle City is a triumph of Australian musical theatre

Cassie Tongue, Aussie Theatre

Director Darren Yap unobtrusively orchestrates his first rate creative team and brilliantly chosen cast in the tight space of the Hayes ....

Diana Simmonds, Stage Noise

This born-again piece of musical theatre is dazzlingly entertaining.

John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald

MIRACLE CITY

Sydney Opera House Studio

This sleek, highly sophisticated production, while set in America and analysing and satirising televangelism, was written by two Australians in top form … Enright’s book and lyrics are sensational, punchy and witty; Lambert’s score is gospel driven yet with flavours of folk, country and soul. It is clever, delicate and piercing, has some tumultuous and joyous moments. With the widespread revelation of horrific abuses in religious organisations, and in this era of Trump and Weinstein, the issues raised by Miracle City are powerfully relevant right now.

Lynne Lancaster, Arts Hub
20th October 2017

It is sensitive, searching, clever and never sacrifices sparkle for story. The final scene of the musical – which mustn’t be spoiled – is still shockingly stark. It breaks every rule of musical theatre finales. It’s thrilling.

Cassie Tongue, The Guardian
14th October 2017

Nick Enright and Max Lambert's Miracle City raises the rafters at the Sydney Opera House. The singing is excellent. Higgins – whose performance as the recovering addict Bonny Mae is very good – has the entire room hanging on her every syllable singing I'll Hold On.

Jason Blake, SMH
15th October 2017

Miracle City is a sharp and clever show that is full of some interesting twists. It is also one that feels as relevant today as it did on its debut.

Natalie Salvo, Arts Review
16th October 2017

Enright’s book is clever and punchy, damningly juxtaposing the hypocrisy and irony of the public message against the private turmoil and compromise, but in the end it’s not faith and hope of salvation that is condemned, rather the exploitation of those desires, financial or otherwise.

Angus McPherson, Limelight Magazine
15th October 2017

All Lambert’s rousing gospel-and-country songs are in safe hands with director Darren Yap’s tremendously accomplished cast.

Deborah Jones, The Australian
16th October 2017

LETTERS TO LINDY

Directed with sensitivity and wit by Darren Yap ... Letters to Lindy is not only highly entertaining, but also an important contribution to the Australian story.

Diana Simmonds, Stage Noise
4 September 2016

A fascinating collage of grief, justice and women who don’t conform. Yap’s fluid staging and skilled cast keep things lively.

Jason Blake, Sydney Morning Herald
6 September 2016

Director Darren Yap directs his excellent team of professional actors with a keen eye for the theatricality of Valentine’s work, and avoiding the pitfall of documented research upon the stage

Peter Wilkins, Canberra Critics Circle
10 August 2016

Director Darren Yap brings together all the talent of versatile acting to intensify the drama. Be moved by the good and bad of humanity in the context of Australia’s identity.

Adrienne Gross, Australian Stage Online
11 August 2016

Writer Alana Valentine has used some of the thousands of letters that were sent to Lindy Chamberlain following the disappearance in 1980 of her baby daughter Azaria at what was then called Ayer's Rock [Uluru].

Alanna Maclean, Canberra Times
10 August 2016

DIVING FOR PEARLS

Griffin Theatre

Katherine Thomson’s bitterly funny portrait of working class life in a steel town, expertly staged at Griffin. Director Darren Yap’s production brought Thomson’s gritty, complex characters to life and Ursula Yovich was magnificent as Barbara, effortlessly dominating the stage and audible a mile away.

Jason Blake, audreyjournal.com.au
18 Dec 2017

Yap honours the text and his actors in this beautifully calibrated production. The playwright’s characteristic and irrepressible droll humour is there along with compassion for these people and rage at their predicament.

Diana Dimmonds, Stage Noise

Director Darren Yap honours the text and his actors in this beautifully calibrated production.

Diana Simmonds, Stage Noise - 14th Sept 2017

Director Darren Yap's production for Griffin Theatre Company brings Thomson's gritty and complex characters to vivid life. His casting is faultless.

Jason Blake, Sydney Morning Herald - 14th Sept 2017

Diving For Pearls is an Australian play by Katherine Thomson, first performed in 1991. This production, directed by Darren Yap, gives the play an energy and clarity that makes it resonate and feel as if it was written today.

Kevin Jackson Diaries - 17th Sept 2017

Yap possesses the same affinity for these characters as Thomson.

Cassie Tongue, Timeout - 11th Nov 2017

LADIES DAY

Bright and economical

Jason Blake, The Sydney Morning Herald

Delicate and intelligent staging complementing fine and heartbreakingly truthful performances

Dennis Clements, Australian Stage

Directed with verve and a clear emphasis on the humanity of the characters

Diana Simmonds, Stage Noise

Studded with powerful monologues and charged with an articulate denouement about the enigma of remembered truth, and who has the right to tell what stories

Martin Portus, Stage Whispers

Boisterous and lively direction by Darren Yap. Thoughtful and generously entertaining

Ben Neutze, Daily Review

SERPENT'S TABLE

... the things that are hardest to say can sometimes be expressed with food ... a feast of memory and reflection brought to The Serpent's Table, [in] its short debut season in the Sydney Festival.

a promenade event with the audience – limited to 30 people – led between spaces and cuisines. In a curtained circle suggesting a circus tent, Anna Yen, daughter of a Bondi Junction Chinese restaurant owner, tells us of her discovery that her dad – a hardworking man she barely knew – was once an indentured labourer in the phosphate mines of Nauru.

With steamed dumplings as an accompaniment, Jennifer Wong humorously describes her efforts to assimilate her school lunchbox with those of her devon-munching Anglo peers.

Darren Yap serves a homemade chicken and mushroom dish in honour of his late mother, whose decline and eventual death in a nursing home he describes in a lively and touching monologue that streams grief and shame.

Finally, the audience is welcomed into a pop-up restaurant (rough tables and benches, suspended jam jar lamps) presided over by Indira Naidoo, who relates the story of her introduction to Australia with a serve of her mother's recipe for a fragrant chicken curry...

The food? Delicious. But it's the honesty and feeling in each episode that makes this event more than some foodie novelty. The Serpent's Table reminds us that storytelling is, above all, an act of sharing.

Jason Blake, Sydney Morning Herald

THE GREAT WALL: ONE WOMAN'S JOURNEY

... completely watchable, with plenty of memorable moments and well-composed songs throughout.

bakchormeeboy - 17th July, 2017

hits the right note ... should extend its local run and travel overseas.

Akshita Nanda, Straights Times - 17th July, 2017

I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE

Kookaburra [has] a hit on its hands [with] Darren Yap's vibrant production

Bryce Hallett, Sydney Morning Herald