Diarist Review: 'Dear Evan Hansen' - The 1st UK National Tour in Manila

The Tony winner finally lands in Manila, thanks to GMG Productions! Website version here (published September 12). 

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Dear Evan Hansen: Why it's a musical worth your time in these times

Listening to Dear Evan Hansen eight years ago, around the time the musical took Broadway and the rest of the English-language theater world by storm, one wouldn’t have been able to ignore its commentary on the perils and pitfalls of social media. In fact, that was its most prominent theme, in a way capturing the zeitgeist of the mid-2010s, when Facebook and Twitter (now X) were arguably at their peak and the most explosive segments of the Cambridge Analytica scandal were just about to hit.

For the unfamiliar, the Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical is about a high school kid, Evan Hansen, who inadvertently becomes the poster boy for the grassroots movement surrounding the death of his classmate Connor. Interrogated by Connor’s grieving parents, Evan ends up fanning the flames of their assumption that he and Connor were besties, his small lie distending to proportions both hilarious and disturbing with the help of lots of fake, backdated emails. Soon, the self-proclaimed memorial project put up in Connor’s name swiftly goes viral—the “feathers to the wind” metaphor made manifest. 

Suffice to say, social media is the axis upon which the ridiculous goings-on in Evan Hansen spin. Evan’s lies expand, morph, and take off because of social media, like pieces of gossip left to assume lives of their own in the virtual ecosystem, transforming the smallness of Connor’s death into something everyone in the story feeds off of. Viewed this way, Evan Hansen becomes the ultimate post-elder millennial cautionary tale of our hyperconnected times.

All that is still evident in the version of the musical now playing at The Theatre at Solaire—a terrific UK touring production brought to our shores by GMG Productions, marking the show’s professional premiere in the Philippines.

But, at the same time, a different theme seems to preoccupy this Evan Hansen beyond the notion of toxic virality. As much as this show is about the insanity that social media can engender, it is also, quite clearly, about mental health—and the kind of world built by society’s predisposition to neglect its importance. 

That Evan has mental health problems is not simply a given here; the production has somehow managed to turn that fact into obvious kindling for the half-comedic, half-tragic unfolding of the story. Evan has social anxiety debilitating enough to turn him into a fumbling wreck in front of other people (the musical’s title stems from the letters he’s supposed to write to himself, as an assignment from his psychiatrist). By giving this aspect of the character the importance it warrants, this Evan Hansen allows for compassion to flood into its narrative: The viewer acquires a lucid understanding of Evan’s actions, and watching this story transpire becomes a not-difficult exercise in empathy.

It bears mentioning that that’s something the 2021 film adaptation (directed by Stephen Chbosky) mishandled. Somehow the movie almost turned Evan into a villain—a serial liar who struggled with mental health problems. There couldn’t have been a more unlikeable protagonist.

The chief virtue of GMG’s production is that now, Evan is unambiguously a person struggling with mental health problems who ends up spewing lies as a result of those unresolved problems. Moreover, it also shines a light on the larger structural inadequacies in Evan’s—and by equivalence, our—world that either prevent such problems from being resolved or indirectly provide fertile ground for their germination in the household. One sees the world quite plainly through Evan’s eyes: a world where single parents have to juggle multiple jobs to sustain their family while being unable to devote enough time to their children precisely—and paradoxically—because of that basic need to sustain them; a world where parents, far from perfect creatures themselves, end up inflicting their own traumas upon their children, slowly shaping their households into places where children are more prone to feeling isolated, misunderstood, unloved. 

Directed by Adam Penford, this staging of Dear Evan Hansen finds the perfect avatar for explicating its themes in Ellis Kirk, whose portrayal of the titular character is a near-miraculous balance of sympathy and illogicality, just one hurt kid among this story’s many hurt people. Rebecca McKinnis, as Evan’s mom, and Rhys Hopkins, as Connor, supply two more standout performances that thrive in understatement; when either of them is with Kirk onstage, the musical is at its most potent. 

Meanwhile, the production itself—a non-replica, or one that veers away from the original designs on Broadway or the West End, as opposed to most GMG imports—nonetheless makes intelligent, occasionally quite stunning use of theater technology to hyper-realize the musical’s story and thematic concerns. (Curiously, the sound of this production could get disturbingly thin—a rarity in the acoustics heaven of Solaire’s theater.)

 

All things considered, this Dear Evan Hansen is time—and money—worth spending at Solaire. It’s a production that completely understands the proverbial assignment and, more crucially, makes a more insightful experience out of the material.

Diarist Review: 'Walang Aray' by PETA - 2025 run

This was published on September 11 in The Diarist--here--but I'm reposting this in lovely, lovely Prague.

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Walang Aray: I'm happy to report that this staging is unequivocally its best yet

When I saw the Philippine Educational Theater Association’s (PETA)’s Walang Aray during its two-performance laboratory weekend in October 2019, I thought the show was already a hoot. Understandably, it was still quite rough, both in terms of the material (by Rody Vera and Vince Lim) and the production itself (directed by Ian Segarra). Even then, however, its charisma was irresistible, its intelligence as parody and modernization of the zarzuela Walang Sugat marking it as a show to watch out for in the near future.

In 2023, when the musical (still directed by Segarra) finally premiered to paying audiences, I thought it was much more polished—but felt it had sacrificed some of the improvised, wink-wink quality that had made the 2019 version such a pleasant surprise. Sure, this was already the complete deal, a finished work of art that deserved its packed houses and the adulation of fans. Yet, I couldn’t resist the feeling that the show was also trying to balance formalist polish and unstructured irreverence with a bit of unease. (Perhaps my reactions were also a product of memory, of course—I already knew some of the jokes to expect, for one thing, and was admittedly disappointed when this premiere failed to replicate the uproarious, pre-COVID insanity of watching J-mee Katanyag, as the female protagonist’s mother, choking on a morsel of food in slow motion.)  

Now, after the unprecedented success of One More Chance, The Musical last year, PETA has brought back Segarra’s Walang Aray for what can be officially considered its third incarnation. I’m happy to report, then, that this staging of the musical is unequivocally its best yet—the definitive version, if I may. 

To borrow the parlance of self-love, this Walang Aray clearly feels comfortable in its own skin. Much of the improv quality has been lost; in its place, a veteran sketch comedian’s unassailable confidence. As a result, the humor—peerless in the way it mines and makes gold out of present-day Philippine realities—never feels forced, or uncertain, or less than airtight. It’s a production that works with clockwork precision to make you laugh, yet never once breaks a sweat doing so.

Something more, though: The musical’s ethos of love and acceptance as forms of revolution ring quite differently now with the casting of Lance Reblando as the female protagonist Julia, rewriting history as the first trans woman to lead a musical hereabouts, if memory serves me right. Suddenly, the musical’s animating principles of freedom and liberation are no longer just in the mold of Romeo and Juliet’s doomed-lovers’ romance (with a healthy dose of anti-colonial sentiment); it’s now about the bigger, more real world; about the world we know, its inequalities, its injustices; its slow, frequently impeded march towards genuine progress. 

Reblando’s turn as Julia is also a rebuke against transphobic and/or purist naysayers who adhere to closing off the world of stage performance, rather than expanding its possibilities (believe it or not, they exist even in the relatively more liberal world of theater). On that stage, Reblando is magnetic, a worthy leading lady for a show with a killer role for one.

New to the production as well is Jolina Magdangal as Julia’s mother—yes, that Jolina. And hers is a more-than-capable turn; Magdangal does the role justice and clearly needs to do more comedic plays.

Almost everyone else orbiting these two actresses deliver solid work—in particular, Gio Gahol (still note-perfect as the male lead Tenyong since I first saw him in 2019), Roi Calilong (a histrionic delight as a lecherous priest), and Bene Manaois (sharper than ever as a closeted, gym-buff man-child).  

I must confess, though, it’s Reblando and Magdangal who were really my main reasons for catching this rerun. And to that end, they did not disappoint. In fact, someone should write a two-person comedy for them. Add in the Gawad Buhay-winning Shaira Opsimar—the original Julia, also appearing in this run, and a comedic genius herself—and there’s a play I’d run to get a ticket for.

Diarist Review: 'Into the Woods' by Theater Group Asia; 'Quomodo Desolata Es? Isang Dalamhati' by Areté Ateneo; 'Nobody Is Home' by PETA

Omnibus review time--my second piece for The Diarist! Website version of this article here.

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What does 'Filipino-ness' look like on stage today?

What makes theater "Filipino"?

This was the accidental question unifying three shows I saw in Manila in August—incidentally, the long-appointed month for celebrating the national language. Collectively, the three productions—Into the Woods, Quomodo Desolata Es? Isang Dalamhati, and Nobody Is Home—invited audiences to ponder exactly how the very notion of ‘Filipino-ness’ could look and sound like onstage these days.

For Theater Group Asia’s (TGA) Into the Woods, the answer was all about its shining, shimmering surface.

In media interviews, Tony-winning designer and TGA cofounder Clint Ramos—who served as this production’s overall creative director—stated that their goal was to stage a show that “actually considers the Filipino condition.” Director Chari Arespacochaga separately said that a central preoccupation of this Into the Woods was refracting the musical “through the lens of… our histories, our resilience, and our storytelling [as Filipinos].” These statements aligned with TGA’s proclaimed mission to flesh out the figure of the so-called “global Filipino” on the Manila stage.

But statements are one thing; execution—and, more importantly, essence—is another.

In this Tony Award-winning musical, the writers James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim have borrowed popular fairy-tale characters from the Brothers Grimm and placed them inside a multiverse of sorts: Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood existing alongside the new characters of a childless baker and his wife, in a story that imagines what happens when happily-ever-afters go awry.

TGA’s Filipinized Into the Woods confined the story to a stage designed like a báhay na bató, the traditional Spanish-era stone house. Draped in fabrics and weaves drawn from different Philippine cultures, the characters were made to work with “local” accoutrements: Cinderella wore a gown with the distinct, butterfly sleeves of the terno; Little Red Riding Hood fought the big, bad wolf with a balisong, the folding knife from Batangas; the singing harp stolen by Jack (of the beanstalk fame) from the giant was now a Mindanaoan sárimanók. And the giant was now evidently an American speaking with a Southern drawl. 

Honestly, these ornamental touches were a feast for the senses. But situated within Sondheim, they rang hollow, false, unnecessary. This itch to Filipinize the musical only demonstrated the production’s lack of trust in the already-airtight material. (Consider, for instance, the giant as an American “colonizer” who terrorized the “Filipino” characters after Jack stole from her? What a way to bungle the musical’s subtexts.)  

In Ramos and Arespacochaga’s Into the Woods, the global Filipino was one whose idea of nation circulated around rudimentary images of mangoes and coconut trees, rice fields and carabaos—while refusing any deeper engagement with the homeland it constantly waxed poetic over. Sondheim was almost an afterthought.

No wonder the cast—arguably the starriest assembled by any production in Manila in recent memory—felt unmoored, acting in different registers, as if appearing in different plays. Even Lea Salonga (playing the witch) was disappointingly reduced to just her crystalline voice: peerless singing, inchoate characterization. 

In fact, the only truthful performances came from Nyoy Volante (as the baker), Teetin Villanueva (as Little Red Riding Hood), and especially Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante, who, as the baker’s wife, perfectly epitomized Sondheim’s wit and theatrical genius, further proving that nothing can compare to the warmth and honesty of homegrown Filipino talent.

Watching this show, I was reminded of what the poet Conchitina Cruz wrote about the local literary and publishing sphere in the seminal essay The Filipino Author as Producer: “What’s worse than a Filipino poet in English who does not in her poetry speak on behalf of fellow Filipinos is a Filipino poet in English who does.” So it goes, apparently, with Filipino theater makers in English. 

Overall, TGA’s Into the Woods shed no new insight on the musical, only squeezing Sondheim into an ill-fitting conceptual shoe: a show that was generally well-sung, but sorely lacked passion and emotional depth. In this sense, it was rather anti-Filipino.

Over at the Ateneo de Manila University, a far more sincere and theatrically innovative explication of Pinoy selfhood unfolded: Quomodo Desolata Es? Isang Dalamhati, Guelan Luarca’s adaptation of the Nick Joaquin classic A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, using Jerry Respeto’s Filipino translation.

The new play (also helmed by Luarca) retained Joaquin’s original narrative structure. This was still about the sisters Candida and Paula Marasigan, their ailing artist father, their crumbling house in pre-World War II Intramuros, and the unseen titular painting that could make or break the sisters’ fortunes. 

But watching this play, one easily forgot about Joaquin. Luarca’s Portrait magnified the madness swirling within and beyond the Marasigan household, its Intramuros in a state of heightened decay, the better to reflect the looming horrors of both the Second World War and the sisters’ possible impoverishment. In so doing, it gave life—and voice—to all that was ostensibly unseen, and left unspoken, in the sisters’ stories: the follies of the past, the ghosts of the present, the omens of the future.

The result was a play with a confident grasp of time and place, identity and history. So assured was its hand that one’s mind frequently wandered beyond the action unfolding onstage, taking the play up on its invitation to ponder the kind of nation the story intimated; how similar those narrative trajectories might be to the 21st-century Filipino reality. Joaquin was now both chronicler and prophet. 

More noteworthy was the production’s interest in dissecting our “Filipino-ness,” which was nothing if not genuine. Rather than conforming to staid, colonial visions of what a “Filipino” play should look like, it instead challenged the norm, seeking to rethink form and the possibilities of storytelling. To be a Filipino theater artist, this production asserted, was to be capable of radical imagination.

Thus, its use of a Greek chorus, for example: an intelligent, effective reinterpretation of the device, the chorus as both literal and figurative ghosts in the story. Or consider how the design elements all worked in total harmony: a set (by D Cortezano) that made sensible use of native elements, lights (by Jethro Nibaten) that evoked the plot’s changing moods with precision, costumes (by Ali Figueroa) that betrayed a cohesive artistic direction. Even during the final technical rehearsal that I caught, the show’s vision was already crystal-clear.    

During that rehearsal, Delphine Buencamino was already unimprovable as Candida, her bravura portrayal of a woman slowly crumbling from within and desperately clinging to her sanity certain to go down as one of the year’s most unforgettable. Vino Mabalot was an explosive Tony Javier, the wannabe-musician living with the Marasigans, while Maita Ponce was an utterly commanding presence as the siblings’ more affluent sister Pepang.

Meanwhile, at the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) Theater Center, the premiere of Liza Magtoto’s Nobody Is Home heralded a return to form for the 58-year-old company best known for its brand of socially conscious theater. 

Collaborating with the Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater, this new play focused on the plight of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)—in particular, those working in the health care sector and in the context of Western society’s rapidly aging population. Co-directed by Nina Gühlstorff and PETA Artistic Director J-mee Katanyag, it was billed as documentary theater, the play deploying various strategies like interactive segments and lots of fourth-wall breaking to engage the audience more directly and move beyond the usual tropes seen on our stages.

By no means was this play flawless. It could be quite earnest to a fault, the parts that were overwritten did feel overwritten, and the production was far from polished. In the larger scheme of things, however, this was all silly nitpicking: Nobody Is Home was the kind of play that knew exactly what it wanted to say, how to say it, and whom it wanted to listen.

While plays like Care Divas (also by PETA) have shed light on the realities faced by OFWs, Nobody Is Home felt like a welcome breath of fresh air: It found comfort in ambiguity. The Filipino carers in the play, and the German patients and family members they worked with, never once seemed less than real, nor were they made to face situations that offered an easy exit. At the same time, in acknowledging that these were real people with real problems and ambitions—and being comfortable with the limitations set by that acknowledgment—the play was able to imbue its theatrics with a softening touch, thereby enhancing its dramatic plausibility.

My one hope for this play is that PETA tours it around the country. The production itself was quite uncomplicated, and one can imagine it being staged in all sorts of community and educational venues. One main challenge would be filling the vacuum left by the actresses playing the German characters (assuming they won’t return): Susi Wirth and Ute Baggeröhr, as the ailing mother–exhausted daughter tandem, were just wonderful to witness, turning in performances that were never less than truthful; it would be a shame if more people didn’t get to see them, and the delightful chemistry they had with the Filipino ensemble led by the reliable Meann Espinosa.

When I saw Nobody Is Home during its invitational one-weekend run, the theater was filled with young people, presumably students. Watching them engage with and respond to the work was a timely reminder of why exactly theater should never cease to exist. Here was an unpretentious play about real, global Filipinos—about stories many among the viewers no doubt resonated with, told without a shred of hubris by theater makers who clearly understood their Filipino audience.

Esquire Feature: The 'student rush lottery' at Theater Group Asia's 'Into the Woods'

Very pleased to make my debut in Esquire with this piece that made pretty good use of my skills as an anthropologist (wink wink). The website link here.

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Of 'Sold-out' Shows, a Ticket Scam, and the Into the Woods Lottery

Four months before its August 7 opening night, Theater Group Asia’s (TGA) Into the Woods announced that all of its 24 scheduled performances were already sold out. The message seemed clear: Those still without a ticket might as well forget about seeing this musical starring Lea Salonga.

For some people, however, that all changed on opening day itself, when TGA suddenly announced the availability of what it termed "student rush lottery tickets." According to the company’s publicity material, 20 students would be granted the chance to purchase discounted tickets at the box office two-and-a-half hours before every performance, with each student allowed to buy a maximum of two tickets.

Theatre Group Asia's Facebook post on August 7, 5 p.m.: "If you're dreaming of a night at the theater, this is your chance to score tickets to Into the Woods tickets at a special price! THE LOTTERY STARTS TONIGHT and will be open every show! Swipe for full mechanics and see you at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater. Cash transactions only!!," the announcement said.

Publicity material by TGA, including a sold-out declaration from March 30, Facebook.

Ticket rush or ticket lotteries are nothing new in the theater world: They have long been standard practice for Broadway (New York) and West End (London) productions. These rush promotions and lotteries more or less occur daily, selling a limited number of seats per performance at markedly discounted prices. According to Playbill.com, which compiles a regularly updated list of such promotions for currently running Broadway shows, lotteries are now mainly conducted online, while rush tickets are sold either online or onsite. At the outset, then, it wasn’t really clear whether TGA’s "student rush lottery" was going to be a rush promotion or a lottery. As I eventually discovered, it also operated quite differently from the lotteries on Broadway, where names are drawn at random from a pool of entrants (as in an actual lottery)—and lining up is not necessary.

Students' Experience at Theatre Group Asia's Lottery Tickets for Into the Woods

This was how Cessna, a medical technology student from the University of Santo Tomas, ended up watching the show. The morning of August 29, Cessna was first in line for the lottery at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater (SPAT), Circuit Makati, where Into the Woods was scheduled to play its fifth-to-the-last performance later that evening.

Cessna described herself as a theater fan; though yet to see a show by any of Manila’s many theater companies, she’d caught the touring productions of Hamilton, Miss Saigon, The Lion King, and Cats at The Theatre at Solaire. Her familiarity with Into the Woods was limited to the 2014 film adaptation starring Meryl Streep: "I’m kind of going into this show blind," she said.

Cessna had long given up on ever seeing this Into the Woods, having failed to snag a ticket during the public sale earlier this year. Then, she saw a TikTok video by someone who’d seen the show; the caption went something like: “POV: You’re lucky to get this seat for 750 [pesos]. Such a steal.” That’s how she knew of the lottery. Determined to secure a ticket and watch Salonga perform live for the first time (“the great singer that she is!”), Cessna arrived at Circuit Makati at 8:40 a.m. on the 29th (she didn’t have class that day) and hunkered down outside SPAT for the eight-and-a-half-hour wait until the box office opened.

Twenty minutes later, Elora arrived at 9 a.m., second in line, foldable chair in tow. A media studies student at the University of the Philippines Diliman, Elora, too, had tried—unsuccessfully—to buy tickets during the public sale, and found out about the lottery only a few days earlier on TikTok.

Elora wouldn’t call herself a theater super fan, though she’s currently into the musicals Beetlejuice and Waitress. "I’m more of a concertgoer," she said. Apart from having caught the musical Six when GMG Productions brought it to Solaire last year, she’d yet to see any local production, even the ones staged by Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (DUP) at her school. Her younger sister was the real Into the Woods fan, and the reason she was camping out at the lottery line. "I also want to learn more about the theater scene in Manila," Elora said. "I have nothing to lose [from lining up here], anyway."

In contrast, Hannah, who arrived at 10:30 a.m. and was sixth in line, had already seen the show, having bought a ticket for P5,500 during the presale period using her own allowance. A medical student from Bulacan, she said she was lining up for the lottery because the production was "worth watching [again] talaga," and "it’s rare to have Lea Salonga onstage" in the Philippines. Her first time at the theater was only last year: GMG Productions’ Miss Saigon at Solaire; TGA's Into the Woods was her second.

While she knew of the currently running or upcoming local productions like the Philippine Educational Theater Association's (PETA) Walang Aray Tanghalang Pilipino’s Pingkian, she only wished she could stretch her budget to be able to watch these other shows.

It’s interesting, to say the least, how Cessna, Elora, and Hannah all arrived way earlier than the scheduled time of arrival suggested by TGA. In its publicity material for the lottery, TGA instructed: “No need to come early. Lines open only at the posted times.” That meant 12:00 p.m. for matinee shows and 5:00 p.m. for evening shows.

However, all three of them separately stated that one could not—and should not—trust those suggested times.

They had experienced lining up for extended periods of time to buy tickets before: Elora spent at least three hours in line for One Direction concert tickets when the now-defunct boy band came to the Philippines. Cessna was a veteran of anime and streamer conventions, and had once fallen in line at 4 a.m. for a meet-and-greet at SMX Convention Center, Pasay City. Hannah camped out for two days (“I didn’t sleep properly”) to secure a ticket to the American singer Olivia Rodrigo’s concert at the Philippine Arena in 2024.

But it wasn’t just these past experiences that prompted the three to spend more than half the day at Circuit in order to see Into the Woods. Hannah had seen the Instagram photos and reels of the long lines of lottery ticket hopefuls in the last several days; of people going, “It’s only 3 p.m., but I’m already number X in line.” In fact, Hannah said, “It’s ironic that [TGA itself] (re)posted such videos [on Instagram and Facebook stories],” in direct contradiction of its own instructions.

In Elora’s case, she had actually tried to score lottery tickets the day before. Arriving at 2:30 p.m., she found the line terribly long already. “I thought 2:30 was a reasonable and early enough time to arrive, but when I got here, I thought, okay, I’m not even going to fall in line anymore. I’ll just arrive as early as possible tomorrow.”

Cessna said she had also seen the videos on Facebook, “of people talking about how they tried to get lottery tickets, but the line was already quite long by lunchtime.”

Moreover, when she passed by SPAT a few days earlier to inquire about the lottery mechanics, the theater staff even advised her to arrive as early as she could because "the line was usually already long by 12 noon."

"I never believed those instructions. It’s all on Reddit," Hannah said, referring to people talking about their actual experiences with the lottery. A simple Google search confirms this.

Lining Up for the So-Called Lottery First-Hand

I had a similar experience with Cessna. When I arrived at Circuit at 4:35 p.m. the day before these interviews were conducted, the line already stretched from right outside the theater entrance on the ground floor to the adjacent drop-off curb, like an extremely flattened, elongated letter C. Later, at the box office, the chirpy attendant said to me, "Agáhan niyo talaga, sir." Come extremely early.

Thus, I found myself next in line to Hannah that morning of the 29th. It was only 11:30 a.m., and I’d initially planned to run some errands first before hitting the line. Just two hours later, the number of ticket hopefuls had ballooned to 36. By 4:30 p.m., 30 minutes before the box office was set to open, I counted around 108 people in line, not including the ones I’d seen lining up for a brief while before leaving prematurely.

The line outside the theater at 4:30 p.m.

Throughout the afternoon, Hannah and I shared the same thought: Why wouldn’t the theater staff just tell the people way further down the line that they were actually wasting their time? At some point, someone from inside the theater even came out to inspect the lengthy line and said to the crowd, "I hope you all get tickets today."

Because this was how the lottery actually panned out on both days I was there: At 5 p.m., everyone in line was allowed into the building by the guards. We ascended the several flights of escalators before arriving at the theater lobby on the fifth floor. There, the line was compressed into a more compact, sinuous version of itself in front of the box office. The office attendants then commenced ticket selling in the exact order that people were lined up. Each person was asked if they wanted to buy one or two tickets, as advertised—but only one buyer needed to be a student (a current ID or proof of enrollment had to be presented). Both tickets, if one decided to buy two, were sold at the same price for cash payments only. Very quickly, and rather predictably, then, the day’s measly ticket allocation was exhausted. There was no genuine lottery to speak of.

After all ‘lottery’ tickets had been sold, the attendants asked the remaining, sizable crowd still in line to write down their names on a sheet of paper, still in the order that they were lined up. At 7:15 p.m., while the regular audience (and lucky 'lottery' buyers) filed into the theater to take their seats, a sort of last-minute ticket selling unfolded at the box office. On both nights, the attendants called out the names on the ersatz waitlist in order. The first few names were given the option to buy the unsold wheelchair- designated seats in the theater at their regular price (cashless modes of payment now allowed); when these extremely limited seats were sold out, everybody else was told to just try their luck again.

During the waitlist selling at the box office, I observed a mother scrambling to pull out a few more one-thousand-peso bills from her wallet, evidently having planned to spend far less on tickets for her and her teenager. But even the actual, faux-lottery itself was vague with pricing and seat availability. The publicity material only stated: "partial view seats available." One learned of the specifics elsewhere, such as Reddit threads. Along with several other people in line that day, I ended up scoring orchestra center seats originally priced at P6,000 for just P2,000 apiece. Whatever happened to that much-ballyhooed "sold out" declaration?

Inside the theater, with lottery tickets just about to run out (above), and later on during the 'waitlist' selling (below).

To be clear, Into the Woods wasn’t the first theater production in Manila to sell out its run before it had even opened. Just last year, PETA’s One More Chance, the Musical sold out its entire three-month run ahead of its April 2024 premiere. But the sheer star power attached to Into the Woods arguably set it apart from other shows: Its cast boasted Salonga, Eugene Domingo, Mark Bautista, and Broadway imports Arielle Jacobs and Josh dela Cruz. The massive public attention it generated was thus unsurprising.

Theater Ticket Scams

Unfortunately, it was also buzzy enough to attract the attention of scammers—a problem One More Chance likewise encountered. Into the Woods' sold-out status could only have amplified the public’s desperation, rendering more people vulnerable to scammers claiming to sell tickets to the show.

Athena and Avi, both college students on term break at De La Salle University, were just two of the presumably many victims of scammers. The morning of the 29th, they were fourth and fifth in line for ‘lottery’ tickets. But they had previously lost P5,000 each to a scammer.

“We were desperate to get tickets because [Ticketworld] kept malfunctioning during the original selling period, so we failed to score tickets then,” Athena said. “I found someone in a ticket-selling group on Facebook. That person provided me with lots of supposed proof, like IDs and photos of tickets with blurred-out details. We were really skeptical, but they just kept bombarding us with more ‘proof’, including screenshots of people supposedly vouching for them.”

Avi continued: "We only realized we’d been scammed when we didn’t receive the tickets that were supposed to be emailed to us. And the seller’s Facebook account disappeared real quick as well. There’s no trace of it now."

Still, they were determined to spend more of their own savings as students to see the show. "[Into the Woods] was the first musical I was introduced to as a child," Athena said, "and now’s my chance to see my first live show. It’s our last chance to get tickets." The two literally didn’t sleep the previous night and had arrived around 10 a.m. to line up—though they’d also wrongly assumed there was going to be a matinee performance that day.

Curious to see how scammers operated, I had previously contacted two such Facebook accounts in one of the many "buy-and-sell" groups earlier last month. One was named Shane Aliyah; the other, Lyka Dela Rosa. When I asked if they had a ticket for one date in August, they replied within seconds of each other. "Yes po. Sending [tickets] through e-mail po. Legit seller po. Gcash payment." It was as if they shared a script, or a brain and an e-wallet. They were selling different seats in the balcony section; interestingly, though, they were selling seats originally priced at P2,800 for P2,500. Lyka said I could pay P1,000 first, then the rest after receipt of the ticket; Shane said I could pay half the price first so it would be "safe [for] both of us." "Will add password for security purposes [to the emailed ticket]. Too many scammers," Shane said.

After providing her my address, I received an email from Shane—only her email name was Ashley Summer. The message had a password-encrypted photograph of a ticket. When I told her I was discontinuing the transaction because it was too shady, she said, "Why po [crying eyes emoji]. Legit seller here po. God bear me witness. This is 100% legit. You won’t regret transacting with me po." Then she sent me a screencap of a Ticketworld confirmation purchase for an altogether different date than the one I had asked about.

It’s fascinating to see the kind of informal economy spawned by the mad dash to obtain a ticket to Into the Woods last month, even in spite of—or maybe especially because of—the official statement that there were none available anymore. (In this vein, I know of two fellow theater journalists who each bought their ticket from different secondary sources; one was from a fundraiser for a school’s alumni association.)

That day at the 'lottery' line, I couldn’t help thinking, with a tinge of secondhand envy, how wonderful it would be if only the likes of Pingkian or Walang Aray, or Elecktra at The Mirror Studio in Makati City, or Quomodo Desolata Es? Isang Dalamhati at Ateneo de Manila University also enjoyed this level of insane attention and patronage. Behind me, four senior high school girls from the University of Santo Tomas scrambled to seek last-minute permissions from their parents, having mistakenly thought they were lining up for matinee tickets. At some point, Hannah put on her earphones to attend an epidemiology class on Zoom. A pack of Fox’s candies was passed around. The closer it got to 5 p.m., the longer the line became, its 'latecomers' clearly unaware they were lining up for nothing.