SINGAPORE – At more than 4.8m tall, the towering Big Friendly Giant (BFG) puppet that will come alive at the Esplanade Theatre from April 22 is the tallest one that puppetry designer Toby Olie has ever worked on, requiring four puppeteers to steer.

With minute lifelike movements such as the tilt of a head and moveable brows, the puppets that Olie made for the show, he said, were “some of the most mechanism-heavy puppets I have been involved in creating”. He also designed the puppets in the 2022 hit stage adaptation of Studio Ghibli classic Spirited Away.

The choreography of puppets onstage promises to be a “delumptious” visual feast – with props like the dream-catching net built-in with special effects and the evil giants being inspired by Scandinavian folk art of trolls and the pink mottled skin texture of Asian elephants. It took his team of 14 puppetmakers 14 months to develop them.

The new stage version of The BFG, based on British children’s author Roald Dahl’s book of the same name, premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in November 2025 to generally positive reviews.

Having been seen by more than 75,000 people, the story of orphan Sophie, who is stolen by a benevolent vegetarian giant and taken to a world of other “human bean”-eating giants opens at the Esplanade Theatre on April 22.