Panasonic proudly sponsors "Operation Oops! - the Musical"

【HKRep】A housing development that claims to help first-time buyers goes bust. Disenfranchised, common folks decide to kidnap the real estate developer. This group of ragtags may have a plan, but they have no foresight. Will they succeed or fail? The brand-new original musical Operation Oops! – the Musical is chock-full of lighthearted humour and catchy songs. It follows a group of ragtags who can’t afford to buy their own apartments and their botched operation to “turn the situation around.”
 
Renowned Macao playwright Lawrence Lei I Leong adapted his prize-winning novel Wolf Hunt as a musical, collaborating with a group of crème-de-la-crème artists. Leon Ko and Fong Chun Kit—the winning duo of such hits as The Impossible Trial and Sing Out—reunite in this musical in which songs evoke memories and farcical plots contend justice, deriding the desperation of urbanites today. Having received its world premiere in Macao earlier this year, Operation Oops! arrives on Hong Kong shores. The musical’s creative team includes Leon Ko (composer, co-lyricist and arranger), Bill Iu Ching Ue (co-lyricist), Lawrence Lei I Leong (playwright), Fong Chun Kit (director) and Florence Cheong (choreographer). The production features two casts: Jordan Cheng, Clinton Zhang, Christopher Ying, Tunes Ting, Simon Lou and ManMan Kwok (cast▲) and Fung Chi Yau, Sam Lau, Andrew Chan, Can Can Lei, Lau Shau Ching and Qin Yifan (cast●). This musical runs from November 22^nd to December 6^th at the Hong Kong City Hall Theatre. Because of strong advance sales, six additional shows have been added. Tickets are available now from URBTIX outlets.
 
Composer, co-lyricist and arranger Leon Ko states, “Operations Oops! – the Musical is imbued with unique alternative black humour embedded with romance and sincerity. We ensure that theatregoers from a wide range of backgrounds not only understand but also adore the many characters, cheering them on as the story unfolds. I also want to play a guessing game: can you tell my lyrics from Bill Iu’s? Consider this my brand of humour. Productions tempt audiences to return to the theatre through theatrical magic. Sometimes such magic does not result from perfect execution and technique. Perhaps I can even be more daring: to sustain this magic, we make certain sacrifices not to strive for perfection. Operation Oops! – the Musical is precisely this type of show. It calls for a stroke of genius that deliberately retains a rugged texture. Over-polishing it will reduce its innate sparkle.”
 
Co-lyricist Bill Iu Ching Ue explains, “At a certain level, elements such as ‘riffraff’, ‘absurdist’ and ‘black humour’ fall within my comfort zone. The Hong Kong performances do not count as a ‘re-run’ but more like a ‘restructure’. The above elements will far surpass what we did earlier. Since we’ve already stepped on the accelerator, why not go into overdrive? Challenges are omnipresent. What makes writing lyrics and creating musicals so much fun is how to use songs to move the story forward. Yet we must ensure artistic merit through memorable tunes with good rhyme and rhythm. To write Cantonese lyrics is especially tricky, akin to dancing with shackles—mixing pain with joy.”
 
Playwright Lawrence Lei I Leong offers his perspective: “We made revisions to the story and characters because we try to present an even better work to Hong Kong audiences. Apart from making them laugh, we proffer a deeper understanding. Because the original story was set amidst a red-hot real estate market, in order to match today’s reality, we spent a lot of time and effort updating the details to fit our present circumstances. The story spans borders and the songs written by Leon Ko are beautiful. I believe no matter for Macao or Hong Kong, even audiences in other Chinese-speaking territories will find resonance and laugh along with us.”
 
Director Fong Chun Kit remarks, “For this run, we’ve plumbed into our characters’ motives, hoping our audiences can easily grasp why each person decides to join the ‘operation’. We also strengthened our use of the theatre space, hoping to create a fluid production that is even more delightful. Our two casts share their own chemistry. For sure they’ll engender different results. Each actor interprets his or her role differently, thus making it even more worthwhile for our audiences to see the show not only once but multiple times. I hope they can empathise with our characters: though lost in their pursuits, they eventually find themselves and live a better life.” 
 
Choreographer Florence Cheong adds, “Whenever we bring a work to a different city, the dynamics between our actors and audiences generate new energy in a new space. For me, this run allows for deepening and reworking. Every character should have unique body language. As those body languages intersect, we create a varied ensemble. Apart from sustaining the high energy of the original, we finetune small gestures capturing emotional nuances of daily life. In that way, dance movements are both visually enchanting and they reflect plot transformations and changing character relationships, bringing a veritably affecting three-dimensional theatrical experience.”
 
About Composer, co-lyricist and arranger  Leon Ko
Leon Ko received a Master’s degree in Musical Theatre Writing from New York University. His output includes Heading East (Richard Rodgers Development Award in the US), Takeaway (Theatre Royal Stratford East in London), Sing High (Macao Cultural Centre) and the Cantonese musicals The Good Person of Szechwan, The Legend of the White Snake, Angel Falls, Field of Dreams, The Passage Beyond, Sing Out, Our Immortal Cantata, The Woman in Kenzo, The Impossible Trial, I Am What I Am and Operation Oops!, garnering him ten Hong Kong Drama Awards to date. He also received awards for Best Music in a Musical in Shanghai, Beijing and Jinan. In 2004, Ko collaborated with Jacky Cheung as music director for the Mandarin version of Cheung’s musical Snow • Wolf • Lake. In 2025, Ko was appointed ambassador for the Shanghai Culture Square Musical Theatre Festival. 
 
On the film front, Ko’s music for Perhaps Love won the Best Original Film Score and Film Music at the Golden Horse Awards, Hong Kong Film Awards, Asia Pacific Film festival and Golden Bauhinia Awards. His theme song for The Last Tycoon also earned him Best Original Song at the 32^nd Hong Kong Film Awards. The Warlords, to which he was part of the music team, was nominated at the Golden Horse and Hong Kong Film Awards. Ko also received an ASCAP Screen Music Award for Monster Hunt 2. His film music also includes Mr. Cinema, The Great Magician, Dearest, Monster Hunt, Shed Skin Papa and Cinema Strada.
 
Other works include new music for the Yam Kim Fai and Pak Suet Sin Charitable Foundation Chinese opera productions Princess Chang-ping, The Reincarnation of the Red Plum Blossom and Shade of Butterfly and Red Pear Blossom; music for the play The Liaisons (Hong Kong Arts Festival and Fredric Mao Theatre Project) and Tonnochy. Ko collaborated with Yip Wing-sie and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta in The Passage Beyond In Concert, The Amazing Filmphony and was appointed the Sinfonietta’s Artist Associate (2018‒2019). In 2020 and 2021, to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Hong Kong original musicals, he curated and served as music director for The Originals and The Originals Reimagined. In 2022, he was artistic and musical director of Le French May’s Cities of Light programme, collaborating with singers Gin Lee and Talie Monin.
 
In 2010, he launched Time in a Bottle, the first-ever perfume bottle exhibition in Hong Kong, showcasing the artistry of vintage bottles in the context of theatre. A second edition was presented in 2024 at the Hong Kong Performing Arts Expo, and has toured both Hong Kong and Japan.
 
Leon Ko received the Outstanding Contribution in Arts award at the 2025 Hong Kong Arts Development Awards.
 
About Co-lyricist   Bill Iu Ching Ue 
A graduate of the Department of Japanese Studies at The University of Hong Kong (2019) and Drama School at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (2024), Bill Iu was the recipient of the Academy Scholarship for four consecutive years. Between 2024 and 2026, he served as a full-time musical theatre curator (intern) at Musical Trio and is a member of the Composer and Authors Society of Hong Kong. Among his translated works are numbers from the Broadway musicals SIX and Hamilton. He has also collaborated in several original musical theatre works, among them Our Love Stories, Tale of the City, The Secret Agent Spin-off: The Hidden Treasures, History Play and Operation Oops!.
 
Bill Iu is currently a freelance actor, dancer and lyricist building a profile as an all-round theatre-maker. 
 
About Playwright  Lawrence Lei I Leong
Formerly head of the Drama School of the Macao Conservatory under the auspices of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR Government, Lei received the highest honour in China for theatre—the Cao Yu Playwriting Award—in 2025. His February 29 won best play at the International Monodrama Festival the same year. Lei has received many accolades as playwright and as director, and his works have been selected for many graduate research projects. Two of his plays, February 29 and Hide and Seek, have toured in recent years on the Chinese mainland and around Southeast Asia.
 
Lei’s works have been included in such collections as Collection of 100 Outstanding Plays, Selection of Plays for the Centenary of Chinese Drama and 40 Most Influential Works of Experimental Theatre in Contemporary China, as well as part of the Taipei University of the Arts curriculum. February 29 was featured at the 2022 Winter Olympics Cultural Festival; it also won the 2^nd National Small Theatre Award. Among Lei’s screenplays are One Week Away (16^th Los Angeles International Family Film Festival, Best Foreign Language Comedy). His My Name is Nobody has been collected by Shanghai’s Ming Contemporary Art Museum. His novel Eye of Providence was included in the “20 Chinese Novels 2001‒2015”. 
 
Lei’s selected plays have been published, as well as his novels Half a Face, The Blood Maze, Eye of Providence and Awkward Operation. 
 
Lei was invited by the Macao Cultural Affairs Bureau to provide the libretto for the original chamber opera A Dream of Fragrancy. In 2001, he was invited as a theatre critic in Hong Kong by the International Association of Theatre Critics. 
 
In 2012, Lei received the Cultural Merit Medal of the Macao SAR Government.
 
About Director  Fong Chun Kit
Fong Chun Kit joined HKRep as Resident Director in 2020 and assumes the position of Assistant Artistic Director in 2023. He has started his partnership with HKRep after graduating from the Drama School of The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) Degree, majoring in Directing since 2010. Among the 30 plus works he directed, more than half of them had re-runs and toured for over 200 performances.
 
Fong’s graduate piece Taming of the Shrew won him the HKAPA’s Outstanding Director award. Six-time nominee of Best Director at the Hong Kong Drama Awards, he won the award for four times with The Truth from Liar, Sing Out, The Impossible Trial – a musical, and Scapin in Jiānghú, Chap. 2023. He was also awarded Best Director at Hong Kong Theatre Libre with Lysistrata. The Last Supper directed by him was also selected among the “40 Most Influential Works in Chinese Contemporary Studio Theatre”. In 2024, he won Outstanding Director at the 2024 China Musical Association Annual Ceremony and Best Director of the Year at the 2025 Beijing Tianqiao Musical Annual Ceremony.
 
Fong’s directorial output includes The Impossible Trial – a musical (commissioned by WestK, co-presented and co-produced by WestK and Hong Kong Repertory Theatre), The Absolute Task, After Life, Scapin in Jiānghú, Chap. 2023 and 2024 (also as playwright), The Isle (co-director), That's Not True, Ambiguous, Principle, Auspicious Day, Marriage, The Last Supper and Secrets of the 81/2 Floor for the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, Falsettoland, Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, and Avenue Q for Windmill Grass Theatre, The Truth from Liar, Sins, Forget Me Not, Monsters and Monsters (re-run) for the Artocrite Theater, Sing Out by Lee Hysan Foundation, The Originals and The Originals (Reimagined) – Hong Kong Musicals in Concert curated by Leon Ko, The Beauty Queen of Leenane for Project Roundabout, My Very Short Marriage for Music Nation, A Floating Family – A Trilogy for the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Xiyang Zhanshi, Le dieu du carnage for Dionysus Contemporary Theatre, Lysistrata and The Taming of the Shrew for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Red Sky for Chung Ying Theatre Company, The Goat for We Draman Group, Three Men and A Lady (playwright, director and actor), Twelfth Night for tobe THEATRE, With Love William Shakespeare for Theatre Noir (playwright and director).
 
About Choreographer   Florence Cheong
A freelance artist, Florence Cheong works as a creative artist, stage director and choreographer, spanning such genres as musical theatre, dance theatre, opera, film and large-scale concerts.
 
Among her credits in musical theatre are: Co-director, choreographer and scenographer for I Am What I Am (Cantonese, touring version); director and choreographer for Sing Out; playwright, director and choreographer for Trigger, Call Out and Dalia. She was also a member of the cast for the Hong Kong version of the Broadway musical First Date. Among her choreographed works are The White Collar Principle, Sing High, Pippin, Murder Code: D, The Woman in Kenzo, Disneyland Shanghai’s Frozen and Operation Oops!.
 
She has created, directed and performed in such dance works as The Time Keeper, In Her Shoes and Remember Me. Among her operatic output as choreographer are A Dream of Fragrancy, La Traviata, Der Freischütz and Andrea Chénier. She also served as dance director for such films as Empire Hotel, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Timing. She has participated in large-scale pop concerts by such luminaries as Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Ivana Wong.