The Star Theatre

Most venues hide behind a box office. This one hangs its auditorium in the air above a shopping mall.

The Star Theatre is where the big touring concerts and comedy shows that are too large for a club and too small for the National Stadium tend to land. Go for a specific act, eat in The Star Vista first and arrive early enough to enjoy the building on the way in. There is no house season to browse, so the next action is to follow the promoters and acts you like and book early when they announce.

Why the building matters

Step out at Buona Vista MRT and you can’t miss it: a big, curved, sliced-open building whose main auditorium appears to hover above a terraced mall. That was the brief. Architect Andrew Bromberg of Aedas pitched it as a civic hub where a large performance venue and a food-heavy mall would feed each other. It opened in November 2012 with a David Foster concert and cost S$500 million. The hall is a horseshoe of 5,000 seats, with an orchestra level and two shallow balconies, about 55 metres wide, sitting on a forest of columns and acoustically separated from the shops below. The auditorium box is clad in segmented, acid-etched glass, which gives it a soft, lantern-like skin after dark.

The clever part is how much of it is outdoors. The public spaces are shaded and cooled by the breeze rather than air-conditioning, which the architects say cut mall cooling costs by 30 per cent. Free-standing escalators carry you up to open-air foyers, ramps wrap around the hall, and an open-air amphitheatre sits five floors up, doubling as a lunch spot and a place to wait for the doors. In a city that treats air-conditioning as a civic religion, a concert venue you reach through the breeze is a pleasant surprise.

Who books it

The building is owned by Rock Productions, the business arm of New Creation Church, which holds its services in the theatre; in 2019 the same company bought The Star Vista below. The rest of the time the hall belongs to touring promoters, and past bookings have ranged from Harry Styles and Shawn Mendes to Trevor Noah, XG and Deep Purple.

How to do it well

Shows are announced by their promoters and sold through the main ticketing platforms, so check each show’s promoter page for times, seating and prices. Eat in The Star Vista before the show rather than after, when everyone else has the same idea. Then take the escalators up through the terraces rather than the quickest route; on a breezy evening the walk to your seat is half the show. Buona Vista is on the East West and Circle lines, so getting home is easy in either direction.

Good to know The Star Performing Arts Centre, 1 Vista Exchange Green, next to Buona Vista MRT (East West and Circle lines). Check each show’s promoter and ticketing page for times, seating and prices.

The Star Theatre | 1 Vista Exchange Green, Singapore | Nearest MRT: Buona Vista