The Year in Philippine Theater (2025)

First yearender for The Diarist--here! The one thing I couldn't include anymore, because it was neither in Sydney nor Manila, was Kimberly Akimbo with Menchu in Singapore, a legit 40-hour whirlwind adventure!

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Why I still longed for Filipino theatricality in 2025

Writing year-end appraisals of the theater landscape is not only about remembering the shows one saw, but also about taking stock of those one missed. In my case, the latter group includes GMG Productions and Stages’ Come From Away—which many of my fellow reviewers raved about—as well as Repertory Philippines’ Art, the 20th edition of the Virgin Labfest, and a slew of productions by university-based organizations.

That’s because I spent most of the first half of 2025 in Sydney, Australia, as a graduate student in medical anthropology. As it happens, that’s also where I encountered some of my favorite theater of the year.

At the Ensemble Theatre—a 200-seater just across the harbor from the Sydney Opera House, and a few minutes’ walk from the Harbor Bridge with its iconic arch—I saw a production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie that struck a perfect, delicate balance in drawing out the memory play’s dreamlike melancholy and its inherent comedy. There, I also caught Lauren Gunderson’s The Half-Life of Marie Curie—spare, but never slight; emotional, but never histrionic—with topnotch production design that conjured landscapes and seascapes, dank interiors and the great outdoors, with just a small, round, see-through dais for a stage, judicious use of lights, and a sheer curtain hung from a circular track. A third standout in that venue: the Australian premiere of Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2024—“a gentle chamber piece,” to quote one Sydney critic, about a specific kind of life that loneliness and childhood trauma can carve for a grown man. Directed by Darren Yap, this production went straight for the heartstrings with little resort to overt melodrama. 

At the Opera House itself, I scored a ticket to the sold-out rerun of the acclaimed Sydney Theatre Company production of Suzie Miller’s RBG: Of Many, One, a monologue that eschewed hagiography in its fleet-footed (re)construction of the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late American justice and women’s rights activist. Heather Mitchell’s performance in the titular role was the very definition of Herculean—maturing and shrinking, aging and de-aging before our eyes in seconds, reminiscent of Shamaine Buencamino’s work for Dulaang UP’s Sidhi’t Silakbo in 2023.

I also count myself fortunate to have snagged a last-minute seat to another sold-out show: Belvoir St. Theatre’s The Spare Room, starring Australian acting royalty and two-time Oscar nominee Judy Davis. Playing a woman who takes in her dying, cancer-stricken friend—and must contend with said friend’s preference for alternative, oft-unproven therapies—Davis was the epitome of knowing how to command an audience (and make them laugh!).

Meanwhile, in the 55-seater Old Fitz Theatre, nestled in the basement of the 150-year-old Old Fitzroy Hotel, I saw the Australian premiere of Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane, about a single mother who—without fail—always chooses to see the bright side of things as she cares for her chronically ill child. The play’s beauty was chiefly in how it used the offstage to convey so much of what’s going on, and watching this superlative production, as the eminent Sydney critic John Shand put it, was akin to witnessing “a little monument be erected to the triumph of shared humanity, scene by aching scene.”

For the most part, though, the Sydney theater landscape—as with Manila’s, or perhaps everywhere else, really—was dotted with shows that settled “into that fuzzy groove somewhere between brilliant and crappy, great and wretched,” to borrow the words of my colleague Gibbs Cadiz; shows that were far from either “drop-dread triumphs or spectacular failures.” True, it offered the chance to see material I’d never seen staged in Manila before, such as Harold Pinter’s The Lover and The Dumb Waiter (a twin bill at the Ensemble Theatre), the musical adaptation of Pedro Almodóvar’s film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Broadway replica productions of The Book of Mormon and Hadestown. A student production of the musical Nine at the National Institute of Dramatic Art was rather memorable for its flawed use of live video and projections in the vein of European directors Jamie Lloyd and Ivo van Hove.

Longing for Filipino pusô

Yet, watching theater Down Under, I frequently ended up longing for that very Filipino brand of pusô, or heart, or passion, that has defined the best of what I’ve seen in Manila—that distinctly Filipino sense of theatricality, bone-deep, utterly unembellished, incontrovertibly human.

The Producers at the Hayes Theatre, for instance, was a fine example of the Australians’ keen ear for dark comedy—Alexandra Cashmere, fresh out of college, was dynamite as the bombshell Ulla—but I left that show missing the unbridled joy and larger-than-life quality that Audie Gemora brought to his take on the role of flamboyant director Roger de Bris for Repertory Philippines’ production of this musical in 2013.

Sydney was also a good place to watch Shakespeare in the original Early Modern English, even if imbued with contemporary elements that were nevertheless effective most of the time. At the Opera House, Bell Shakespeare’s Henry V (now Henry 5) was quite admirable for its intelligent use of stillness and minimalist gestures to depict the play’s grimy fight scenes. The Seymour Centre at the University of Sydney hosted my first ever Timon of Athens, with Timon’s extravagances and foolishness transposed to the present (the title now I Hate People; or Timon of Athens). Most unforgettable was The Player Kings, Damien Ryan’s two-part, modern-dress marathon of the history plays—Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, Henry V, all three parts of Henry VI, and Richard III. Including intermissions, this was a 12-hour affair. The whole thing was markedly uneven, with some parts working better than others in their condensed versions, but Liam Gamble was a most indelible presence on that stage as Richard III (the actor himself lives with cerebral palsy).

Still, none of those productions actually made me feel, for lack of a more descriptive term, the way Tanghalang Pilipino’s Der Kaufmann: Ang Negosyante ng Venecia left me frozen with soul-expunging terror inside the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Huseng Batute in 2013.

I do think Filipino artists can learn a thing or two from Sydney’s industry, which is no Broadway—where theater has long been a tourist attraction, and seats to hits like Hamilton have occasionally been sold for over $1,000—but no Manila either, with its own set of economic and institutional problems. For example, almost all local companies in Sydney announce the lineup of their shows for the following year in advance, usually around September or October of the current year, and offer subscription packages that enable theatergoers to buy tickets to a certain number (if not all) of the shows for the forthcoming season at discounted prices (the more productions included in one’s package, the larger the markdown per show). Moreover, many companies offer subscribers the option of free ticket exchanges for the first exchange—you can transfer your ticket to another performance at no cost—provided there are seats available for the new date, and provided the ticket holder pays for the additional amount if their new seat were more expensive than the original. And student discounts are available for almost every performance.

Factoring in ancillary expenses like transportation and food, going to the theater in Manila is not exactly easy on the pockets nowadays. Simple procedures like the ones outlined above can greatly boost theatergoers’ confidence to purchase tickets way ahead of time, or encourage new and younger audiences to see their first show. Of course, some companies have made greater strides than others in making theater accessible—hats off to you, Barefoot Theatre Collaborative!—but the overall picture suggests there’s plenty more that can be done. The quest for a truly democratic theater landscape remains a work in progress.

Still, despite the pervasive issues, that landscape has also been, year after year, a constant source of pleasure and thought-provoking insight. Some of the most precious, cathartic moments of my life have been spent in the dark of the theater. Here, then, is a list of 10 to add to those moments:

1. Two versions of ‘3 Upuan’

When I speak of catharsis, this Guelan Luarca play immediately comes to mind. It’s about three siblings mourning the illness and subsequent death of their father; about the many forms that grief assumes in their varied lives, and what little time they each have to make sense of their loss. 

In my 17 years of theatergoing, I don’t believe any other play has come closer to capturing with heart-stabbing precision the feeling of watching a loved one slowly fade away, and the existential untethering—that unsettling sense of being adrift in no man’s land—that plagues the weeks, months, even years that follow that loved one’s death. I saw this play twice, and each time exited the theater a bit of a wreck, having been compelled to revisit the final week of my own father’s life in 2017. 

The first time I saw 3 Upuan at the Ateneo de Manila University was in February, with Jojit Lorenzo, JC Santos, and Martha Comia all returning from the 2024 premiere—the play, in their hands, an exercise in intellectualizing raw emotion. In October, I saw the new cast—Paolo O’Hara, Cris Pasturan, and Jasmine Curtis-Smith—their emotions collectively bigger and more in-your-face. Two different versions, each no less potent than the other: theater as spiritual reckoning. I can’t wait for the third, and fourth, and fifth iterations.

2. ‘Kisapmata’ at the Cultural Center of the Philippines

Luarca’s first new, fully staged work for the year was actually this adaptation of the Mike de Leon film from 1981, about a household ruled—and tormented—by an iron-fisted patriarch, and its members’ seeming inability to escape his grip. In my review, I hailed this Tanghalang Pilipino (TP) production best-of-the-decade material: the sensibilities of classical myth merged with the tropes of horror to exhume the proverbial rot at the core. It also felt like the collaboration of a lifetime for the TP Actors Company senior members that composed its four-person cast: Jonathan Tadioan, Lhorvie Nuevo-Tadioan, Marco Viaña, and Toni Go-Yadao, each never better, and together, a portrait of actorly generosity.

3. Marvin Ong in ‘Side Show’

Director Toff de Venecia’s take on this Broadway musical about a pair of Siamese twins who become vaudeville celebrities was chock-full of myriad, big swings that didn’t always work. But many times, this production by The Sandbox Collective also became an artistic spectacle, especially when Mark Dalacat’s set, Carlos Siongco’s costumes, and Gabo Tolentino’s lighting cohered into a thrillingly inventive whole in particular numbers. It was also led by two terrific pairs of actresses playing the twins: Krystal Kane and Molly Langley, Tanya Manalang and Marynor Madamesila.

Above all, there was Marvin Ong, the sideshow’s “cannibal king” and loyal friend to the twins. Ong had just two songs—the jazzy Act I ensemble number The Devil You Know, and his big Act II ballad You Should Be Loved. But in those two songs, more so in the second, Ong was a vision of classical musical theater come to life: Endowed with a voice that lifted this production to theatrical heavens, his performance was the crucial piece that transported the viewer right to the heart of this tale of perverted love and wretchedness.

4. Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante in ‘Into the Woods’

When I speak of pusô, I mean Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante’s Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods—arguably the splashiest theatrical event of the year, care of Theatre Group Asia and director Chari Arespacochaga at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater. The production itself was disappointingly incoherent, forcing an ill-fitting attempt at “Filipinization” upon this Stephen Sondheim musical about a potpourri of classic fairy tale characters trapped in a sort of metaverse.

But then there was Bradshaw-Volante—along with her real-life husband Nyoy as the Baker and Teetin Villanueva as Little Red Riding Hood, three beacons of truthfulness in musical theater performance this year. All warmth and wit, Bradshaw-Volante’s turn was an exquisite distillation of Sondheim’s genius, proving that there’s nothing like homegrown Pinoy talent.

5. ‘Dagitab,’ ‘Quomodo Desolata Es?’, and the Filipino identity

In hindsight, it’s unsurprising that the year’s most genuinely profound and cerebral dissections of the Filipino identity came from Luarca, via his two new plays that premiered at the Ateneo.

Dagitab, which I caught during its transfer to the Power Mac Black Box Theater in Ayala Malls Circuit, used the avatars of two fictional Filipino academics to pick apart the ideas of love and forgiveness, devotion and revolution, as they pertain to a present shaped by the complacency and political failures of an entire, still-living generation. The play is about writers, sure—and the joys and pains that a life shaped around the written word entails. But, by the end, it had also posed the inescapable, rhetorical question: What is the point of all this writing when it shuns an honest reckoning with the ghosts of our past? In other words, how long can the comfortable middle class delude themselves into thinking they are fighting the noble fight and resisting the powers that be—when they can’t even let go of the bourgeois trappings of their daily lives? Playing the couple in the most spectacularly artless manner possible: Jojit Lorenzo and Agot Isidro, the latter making her long-overdue return to the stage after the previous decade’s Changing Partners and Rabbit Hole.

In August, I was invited to attend the final pre-opening rehearsal of Quomodo Desolata Es? Isang Dalamhati—Luarca and Jerry Respeto’s new translation and adaptation of Nick Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. In that state, the production was already ready to open—and what a show! “Joaquin was now both chronicler and prophet,” I wrote, a nod to how this adaptation laid bare the kinds of values that supposedly made, or un-made, a Filipino, by refracting our shared personhood through the lens of history. It was also, in my view, the year’s best-designed show, all of its creative elements working in wondrous harmony, evincing a confident, sensible understanding of so-called Filipino-ness.

A third play can be added to this list: Philippine Educational Theater Association’s Nobody Is Home, a return to form for the illustrious company—delightful as educational docu-theater, heartfelt as a tribute to overseas Filipino workers.

6. Two ‘small’ plays

I’m taking a leaf from my colleague Arturo Hilado here in celebrating what he terms “small theater”: the ones often sidelined by buzzier “mainstream” fare.

The first was Nelsito Gomez’s adaptation of the Greek tragedy Electra, officially titled Elecktra After Sophocles. Gomez is a busy, prolific, imaginative man who is clearly interested in asking big questions for the stage—he’s a blood relative to Luarca, in this sense. His Elecktra, the acting thesis production of lead performer Dippy Arceo, had the exact pulse of ancient, blood-drenched myth, even if written in today’s English: one of those plays that seemed intent on not letting the viewer breathe from start to end. Arceo was an electrifying Elecktra, and had formidable sparring partners in Dani Roque (Chrysothemis) and an appropriately intense Issa Litton (Clytemnestra).

On the opposite end of the emotional scale was Boxstage Manila’s Sala sa Pito—my favorite surprise of the year, if surprises mean that overwhelming desire to jump up from one’s seat in applause by curtain. Directed by Dudz Teraña, this production of the late George de Jesus III’s adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde was the paragon of restraint and tonal control. It also starred three of my favorite flesh-and-blood creations of the year, from Yesh Burce, JP Estaras, and the sensational Karyl Oliva as a Bisaya bar girl who’s allergic to nonsense.

7. ‘Si Faust’

Gomez again, this time teaming up with Basti Artadi (of Wolfgang fame) to create what Emil Hofileña rightfully called “a thrilling, unholy marriage of theater and heavy metal.” The subject: the German playwright Goethe’s interpretation of the legend of Faust, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for all sorts of earthly gratification.

I confess to having been disoriented by the heavily stylized singing in this rock opera. However, once I got over that, it was indeed a most thrilling night at the theater—what Luarca described as “total theater,” a show animated so completely by a sense of “extreme theatricality,” and one that left you gobsmacked and “inexplicably shookt,” to use the Filipino slang. High drama, show-stopping vocals, knockout visuals, and a bewitching Maita Ponce as the devil Mephistopheles front and center.

8. Best singing of the year

Besides Ong’s You Will Be Loved, there’s Shaira Opsimar’s Halik ni Hudas in Si Faust (quite apt, for a show about the cosmic [mis]fortunes of mere mortals, that she hit a series of notes bordering on inhuman); and from the song cycle We Aren’t Kids Anymore, woven into a poetic, contemplative whole by director Rem Zamora for Barefoot Theatre Collaborative, Maronne Cruz’s Turn the Page and Gab Pangilinan’s Faking Cool.

9. The comedians of the year

Many would argue that comedy is a tougher skill to master. These six performers made it all look like a walk in the park: In Let’s Do Lunch, Ash Nicanor as a TikToker housemaid who may as well sideline as a party magician; in Ateng, Jason Barcial as a doltish, easily manipulated parlorista; in Shrek the Musical, Alfredo Reyes as Lord Farquaad (nuff said!) and Topper Fabregas as Donkey with a hypnotic, almost-robotic speech; in Gregoria Lakambini, Heart Puyong as the ultimate raketera ensemble player; in Delia D., John Lapus as drag mother to the story’s drag queens—a role without its solo musical moment, but which the actor nonetheless elevated to comic heights with the barest of noises.

10. Five technical standouts

Let me end this piece by saluting five of my favorite technical achievements of the year: One, Marco Viaña’s costumes for Gregoria Lakambini, which deserve to be walked on the brightest runways. Two, from that same musical, the song Buwan, Buwan—proper ear worm, hip, romantic, sexy. Three, Gabriel Ramos and Dexter Lansang’s original music and sound design for Via Dolorosa, the play itself a timely, impassioned, and erudite explication of the Palestinian question (or why the genocide in Gaza and the ever-increasing violence in the West Bank will never be a “complicated,” two-sided issue). Finally, Joyce Garcia’s projections for Si Faust and Bar Boys: The Musical, in both instances showcasing the expansive imaginative possibilities that this art form could take when given careful consideration.

In October, GA Fallarme, who essentially pioneered the field of theater projection design in the Philippines, passed away suddenly. Fallarme’s body of work included his Gawad Buhay-winning design for Pingkian: Isang Musikal—mind-tickling in its use of abstract images—as well as his blend of cityscapes for Repertory Philippines’ I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. In Fallarme’s absence, it’s now up to Garcia and other designers like Steven Tansiongco, JM Jimenez, Bene Manaois, Teia Contreras, and Joee Mejias to ensure the art form continues to flourish and evolve in never-less-than exciting ways. Here’s to the ones who paved the way, and the promise of an exhilarating future!

Diarist Review: 'Shrek the Musical' by Full House Theater Company; 'Gregoria Lakambini' by Tanghalang Pilipino; 'Ateng' by Boy Abunda & RS Francisco; 'Sala sa Pito' by Boxstage Manila

 Last set of reviews for the year, in The Diarist--here!

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From Shrek to Sala sa Pito: All were worth the 'lagari'

The ensemble of Gregoria Lakambini at curtain call.

In the last five weeks, a little over 20 productions of varying sizes and persuasions have played Metro Manila’s disparate theater spaces, from the big, splashy musicals by professional companies to spare, one-act plays by university groups; from fully staged productions to bare-bones readings. Once again, it’s lagarì season for Metro Manila’s theater scene (the term connoting the impossible desire to saw off one’s body just to get to all the places it needs—or wants—to be).

What’s a theater aficionado to do, then, but run after these shows in successive weekends, especially since many had just two or three Friday-to-Saturday runs?

I’ve managed capsule appraisals of four shows I caught to conclude my 17th year of theater-going.

Shrek the Musical

Until Dec. 21, 2025.

The first song says it all: It’s a big bright beautiful world in Full House Theater Company’s production of this Broadway musical adapted from arguably the world’s most famous movie about an ogre.

Eleven years since it premiered in Manila care of the late Bobby Garcia and Atlantis Theatrical Entertainment Group, Shrek now finds new life in the hands of director Dexter Santos, the musical’s sense of spectacle and childish glee amped up to a thousand percent.

This is a full-blown children’s musical that knows exactly who its audience is—kids, first of all, and the kids-at-heart. But even the most clueless adult will find its theme park-inflected charms irresistible. The hardworking ensemble Santos has assembled never seems to run out of breath, and at times literally takes your breath away (Freak Flag, late in the second act, is quite the showstopper).

Notably, the production makes intelligent use of the cavernous space at the Newport Performing Arts Theater—something I’ve never seen done in the venue, and which I now wish more productions would consider. When Shrek (Jamie Wilson) journeys with newfound friend Donkey to rescue Princess Fiona from her dragon-guarded tower, the action spills into the audience: mascots and puppets galore embodying the forest and fairy tale creatures of the story. The whole thing doesn’t come across as a convenient gimmick; instead, it feels integral to the musical’s aims and true to the material’s spirit. What a sight to witness the young and old alike sit up with excitement as they momentarily become part of the show, so to speak. 

Lawyn Cruz’s set can be a bit clunky, though, especially when beheld up close (I was seated on the fourth row). And I do feel this production has sacrificed some of the original film’s wry humor, in exchange for a broader, easier landing. 

Thankfully, this production has Topper Fabregas and Alfredo Reyes, as Donkey and Lord Farquaad, respectively, summoning that exact brand of humor in ways that retain the original’s spirit without coming across as lazy duplicates. These are two of the year’s funniest performances onstage, from two actors who, to use the oft-intoned clause, make the roles truly their own (it’s imaginably even bigger of a challenge for Fabregas, who’s tackling a famously Black-coded part created by Eddie Murphy). And, as Princess Fiona, Krystal Kane continues to prove she’s one of local musical theater’s most exciting and dependable actresses, her first entrance alone a true-blue you-can’t-look-away moment. 

Gregoria Lakambini: A Pinay Pop Musical

Until Dec. 14, 2025.

If Tanghalang Pilipino (TP) wasn’t planning on making its own “Bayaniverse”—one that can plausibly rival filmmaker Jerrold Tarog’s cinematic trilogy on Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar, and Manuel L. Quezon—the Cultural Center of the Philippines resident theater company nevertheless has one in its hands now.

After Mabining Mandirigma (which returns in March 2026) and Pingkian comes this latest musical, penned by Mabini playwright Nicanor Tiongson with Eljay Castro Deldoc—one of the smartest comedic writers working now—and set to music by Nica del Rosario and Matthew Chang.

One can’t be faulted for entering the theater thinking this is going to be a serious musical dramatizing the life of the titular character (Andres Bonifacio’s wife)—how else, after all, to tackle what Nick Joaquin calls this “question of heroes”?

What a breath of fresh air, then, the way this musical upends expectations (the subtitle should be clue enough). 

Gregoria Lakambini is irreverent meta-theater; an upsized town fiesta skit; kanal humor earning its rightful place in the annals of TP history. Gregoria, played by Marynor Madamesila as a Sarah Geronimo-adjacent heroine, is now the star of her own ersatz noontime variety show. And Del Rosario and Chang have composed quite the irresistible, pop-heavy score, laden with some truly gorgeous melodies and blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em, whip-smart lyrics (Buwan, Buwan is a proper earworm; a chart topper in another life!).

In general, the production directed by Delphine Buencamino comes across as a show that’s cognizant of what the material demands of it. Marco Viaña’s costumes are a standout, if only for those fierce jorts worn by ensemble member Sarah Monay. But as a self-professed “Pinay pop musical,” the dancing certainly still has room for more snap and sass, some more sharpness, some more confidence fit for the world’s biggest stages (the choreography by Buencamino and Jan Matthew Almodovar).

This musical is strongest when it’s just having a fun time—when it’s funny, it’s absolutely hilarious, but when it shifts to serious, trying-to-be-profound mode, you can feel the clock ticking. It’s effective less as solemn Hamilton, and way more as wacky It’s Showtime—at the heart of which is Heart Puyong, the surprise MVP of this production, juggling her multiple ensemble tracks with wicked comedic timing and, more importantly, a very Pinoy brand of pusô. 

 

Ateng

Closed Dec. 7, 2025.

It’s no secret that Vincent de Jesus is a terrific musical composer, but this play, returning 20 years since it premiered in the first ever Virgin Labfest, is testament to his skills as a comic playwright. 

The production directed by Rem Zamora was most successful in conveying the dark humor of this play about two parloristas and the manipulative boy toy one of them becomes entangled with. One hour zipped by; Zamora easily plunged the audience back to the mid-2000s, when gay marriage had just been legalized by a handful of countries in the West. The world back then was still a far cry from the relatively more tolerant society of today, though the play might as well have been set in the present, the struggles of its two parloristas only secondarily about quintessential gay and trans liberation—and primarily about the socioeconomic injustices inherent in gay politics in low-income Filipino communities.

As the elder parlorista, Thou Reyes tilted the production a bit too much towards mystery thriller; Reyes’ approach was defined almost purely by his sarcasm, half-muted anger, and deadpan humor, his shifts towards wistful—when the play changed gears every now and then to a fourth wall-breaking, introspective tone—curiously breaking the momentum, rather than organically heightening the drama. Reyes was far too intense (and also felt like he was always in a hurry to spew his caustic zingers), you never doubted he would actually kill his sibling’s boy toy (Dyas Adarlo)—that it struck me as a head-scratching, performative surprise when he didn’t. 

Still, I ended up buying this version of the play—and this version of Reyes’ character—largely thanks to De Jesus’ razor-sharp writing. And also because Reyes had Jason Barcial as a sparring partner, playing the younger, love-struck, doltish sibling. It’s Barcial who gave this play its pathos—a performance that evoked laughter and pity in equally distending proportions, and sometimes both at once.

The drag-club venue itself was somehow quite appropriate: With Ben Padero’s set convincingly replicating the interior of a financially challenged parlorista’s house, the production came across as a drag act that you watched from a remove, with two queens exchanging never-ending blows for our entertainment.

The ensemble of Sala sa Pito at curtain call.

Sala sa Pito

Closed Dec. 6.

Within the Manila theater scene, the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde is perhaps most recognizable in the form of the late Floy Quintos’ Laro. First produced in 2004, Quintos’ adaptation transposes Schnitzler’s 19th-century play about the sexual lives and moral conflicts of the Viennese to the contemporary Philippines of non-heterosexual urbanites. (A Barefoot Theatre Collaborative production of Laro won the best ensemble prize, as well as best director for John Mark Yap, in the 14th Gawad Buhay Awards in 2024.)

But, going by the recently concluded Boxstage Manila production, the late George de Jesus III’s take on Schnitzler’s play deserves to be held in just as much esteem. As a theater fanatic, I live for the small surprise—a newcomer stealing the spotlight, a new play hitting all the right notes, a fledgling company producing an unexpected hit. Sala sa Pito, though not at all a new play, unmistakably felt like such a surprise: a low-key knockout production that deserved to run longer and be seen by more people.

As with La Ronde, the main conceit of Sala sa Pito was that every scene’s a two-hander, with each of its characters daisy-chained to appear in the next scene with another. Save for one, De Jesus’ Filipinos were all ostensibly heterosexual. And, a genius, original touch: Love songs—hugot tunes, as we’d call them—served as transition devices, with the character of a wise-cracking omnipresent singer doubling as a kind of meta-narrator.

The result was a play that dissected those so-called matters of the heart with surgical precision, while cleverly using its characters’ small-scale conversations as avatars for larger debates on the ways Filipinos love, make love, and wrong the ones they love. An anniversary date between a husband with control issues and his battered wife became a canvas for examining the nature of gender-based violence; an unassuming meetup between that wife and her closeted gay friend became an honest confrontation of the unique societal pressures faced by gay men who haven’t come out to their families. In scene after scene, De Jesus cracked open the modern Filipino psyche: our most intimate and perverted problems laid bare.

For all of its 90 minutes, director Dudz Teraña’s production was the epitome of tonal control: always truthful and restrained, and never visibly settling for what in Tagalog could be described as “puwede na.” The use of lights and music seemed straightforward, but did wonders in propelling the play’s narrative and emotional trajectories.

Teraña and his stouthearted cast had relevant things to say, and they made darn sure the audience listened, and laughed and cried healthy amounts of tears along the way. The afternoon I caught this show, three performers easily proved themselves worthy of spots in the forthcoming year-end best-of-theater roundups: Yesh Burce, simply heartbreaking as the battered wife (and what a cinematic face!); JP Estaras, his feather-light take on the closeted gay friend admirably grounded and sincere; and the amazing Karyl Oliva, whose Bisaya bar girl with a comic streak and an aversion for beating around the bush was as fully flesh-and-blood a creation as any I’ve seen onstage this year—or any other year, in fact.

I count myself lucky to have witnessed Oliva run away with Teraña’s Bisaya monologue Proposal in 2019, during that year’s Saltik, a laboratory production of new one-act plays under the Far Eastern University Theater Guild. In Sala sa Pito, Oliva was the very definition of having an interior life; you just knew her bar girl had roamed the streets, fought her fair share of fights, dealt with her fair share of boys. Oliva commanded that stage with not a shred of vanity: She took your breath away, and made you want to jump from your seat and scream, “More!”

Diarist Review: 'Everybody Loves Raymond' - Raymond Lauchengco in Concert

Concert reviewer era incoming jk. This article was published yesterday in The Diarist--here.

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Everybody loves Raymond Lauchengco--even if I was 'too young' to be watching his show!

Is Raymond Lauchengco a TOTGA of Philippine theater?

To go by “Everybody Loves Raymond,” his 60th birthday concert at The Theater at Solaire last Nov. 28, the answer is an emphatic yes.

For those unfamiliar with internet slang, TOTGA stands for “the one that got away,” a uniquely Filipino acronym referencing ex-loves and former partners who nonetheless occupy a special place in one’s heart. But the term can also signify a what-if, a missed opportunity, an alternative version of reality now unattainable.

Throughout the three-hour concert, Lauchengco revisited many of the OPM (or original Pilipino music) songs that catapulted his career to stratospheric heights in the 1980s—for instance, I Need You Back from 1982, a Side-B filler that unexpectedly gave him his first hit at 17 years old; and Saan Darating ang Umaga from 1983, composed for the same-titled movie he starred in alongside Maricel Soriano and the late Nida Blanca.

Despite the genre, however, it was clear that Lauchengco belonged onstage, by which I mean the theater. His voice—unembellished, rich and warm, with a firmly controlled vibrato—was a musical theater leading man’s voice, if there ever was one.

In a parallel universe, Lauchengco would probably be one of our stage luminaries already, joining the likes of his sister Menchu, who directed the concert. The theater’s where he got his start, after all—albeit by accident.

“The most ingenious prank my sister ever played on me,” Lauchengco shared during the concert, “was getting me to audition for The King and I.” He’s referring to Repertory Philippines’ (Rep) 1978 production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which opened in March that year at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, with a seven-year-old Lea Salonga making her professional stage debut as one of the royal children.

At the auditions in 1977, Lauchengco was supposed to be just his sister’s chaperone. However, “she forged my name and signature on a second audition form without telling me; next thing I knew, Bibot (Amador, the late director and cofounder of Rep) was screaming my name. I was so shy, I knew there was no chance I could get a part. So I mustered all my courage to get the whole ordeal over with, and sang the first song that popped into my head—the one my sister would play over and over in the bedroom we shared.”

That song was Evergreen, the theme from the Barbra Streisand vehicle A Star Is Born, and whose first verse (“Love, soft as an easy chair/ love, fresh as the morning air…”) would acquire a different sort of popularity in the Philippines in 2001, as interpolated in the rap group Salbakuta’s S2pid Luv. Evergreen was exactly the kind of ballad Lauchengco’s voice was made for, his dreamy rendition effortlessly summoning images of the lyrics’ “morning glory and midnight sun” in the mind’s eye. 

In the end, Lauchengco—all of 12 years old—landed the featured role of Louis, the female protagonist Anna Leonowens’ son in The King and I; his sister missed out on a part. 

From there it was a few years of juggling high school and the theater—in 1980, for instance, he was cast as the second-oldest Von Trapp child in Rep’s The Sound of Music, playing onstage siblings with his sister Menchu, Salonga, Monique Wilson, and current Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros.

However, it wasn’t long before show business came calling, his departure “from the world of theater to the world of movies and recording,” as he described it, facilitated by none other than the Megastar herself, Sharon Cuneta. “It was Sharon who introduced me to show business,” Lauchengco said.

Cuneta was more than just a career catalyst, though; she was, as Lauchengco confessed that night, also his “first serious celebrity crush.”

Get the ball rolling

He recalled attending a soirée—that customary mixer that all-boys and all-girls schools would hold for their students—when he was in third year high school at Colegio de San Juan de Letran, with a class from St. Paul’s College. “I certainly wasn’t the type to go on the dance floor,” Lauchengco said, “but that afternoon at the soirée, I said yes to get the ball rolling—because in that room was Sharon herself.”

Cuneta was the last of the concert’s four guest artists. Onstage with her, Lauchengco declared: “I had it so bad for Sharon back in the day,” to which Cuneta responded, “You only told me I was your crush last year!”

For the concert, Cuneta sang Hagkan, from her self-titled 1979 album; plus a duet with Lauchengco of one of her most recognizable tunes, Pangarap na Bituin—the theme song composed by the late Willy Cruz for the film Bukas Luluhod ang Mga Tala (in which Lauchengco played a supporting part); and finally, after cries of “More!” from the audience, another duet—the Rey Valera classic Kapag Maputi na ang Buhok Ko.

That last song was preceded by one of the night’s most memorable anecdotes: “One day,” Lauchengco said, “I asked Sharon, ‘Would you like to watch a movie?’” Cuneta, clueless, distracted and grieving a fresh breakup, replied blankly, “With whom?” 

Ah, but the theater—it wouldn’t have been a milestone birthday concert without a segment dedicated to this biggest of what-ifs. And what a segment it was. 

Coming before Cuneta was the night’s third guest, Martin Nievera, who sang some of his biggest hits mostly in medley form: Be My Lady, which he tackled with the audience in fill-in-the-blanks fashion, the audience gamely singing the missing lines back—trust a Pinoy crowd to collectively sing a ballad in tune!—followed by portions of Say That You Love Me and You Are My Song.

It’s no secret that Nievera’s also a theater kid at heart, of course—just look at his many covers of show tunes on YouTube. A Broadway medley with Lauchengco couldn’t have been more unsurprising.

Lauchengco lamented that the reason he gave up pursuing his dream roles from the Broadway canon—Tony in West Side Story, Anthony in Sweeney Todd, Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera—was because his sister kept getting cast as the romantic lead of most of these shows in Manila back then (Menchu played Maria, Tony’s love interest, in the 1981 Rep production of West Side Story; Johanna, Anthony’s love interest, in 1982’s Sweeney Todd). “Singing opposite my sister would have been fine, but what would we do when it came to the kissing scenes?!” he asked Nievera.

Ergo, the Broadway medley between these two balladeers in their 60s, performed with the energy of a pair of 16-year-old theater geeks.

From West Side Story terrain—Something’s Coming and Maria—they traveled to Andrew Lloyd Webber territory—Music of the Night and All I Ask of You, both from The Phantom of the Opera; Memory, the chart-topping sensation from Cats; then back to West Side Story with Somewhere—another crossover success—before concluding with the granddaddy of karaoke sessions, This Is the Moment (from Jekyll and Hyde). It was a succession of Broadway anthems performed as big and brassy as possible, like Solaire were the world’s largest stadium. The standing ovation that capped this segment, effectively stopping the show, was nothing if not well-deserved. There, right there, was Lauchengco the could-have-been musical theater star. 

The night had numerous other high points. Ice Seguerra, the first guest, duetted with Lauchengco on the song that launched their career in 2001, Pagdating ng Panahon, before going solo with a stripped-down rendition of Ryan Cayabyab’s Araw-Gabi—both numbers attesting to Seguerra’s peerless skills as an acoustic crooner. 

Mitch Valdez, the night’s second guest, and ever the consummate comedian, opened her segment with a protracted pretend-lecture meant to enlighten Lauchengco on the life changes that supposedly come with senior citizenship. 

“You have to be nice!” Valdez said. “Everybody else who’s younger is looking at us with envy and buwisit and resentment. You have to be magnanimous when someone at the grocery checkout lane asks to make singit before you because they have ‘two items lang’—but if someone who wants to make singit asks, ‘Puwede ba itong basket?,’ you say, ‘Ulol!’

“Do you know how to use GCash?” Valdez teased Lauchengco. And, “before you make sabak in the traffic, you have to empty your bladder!”

Closer to the finale, Lauchengco delivered a fitting 11 o’clock number (the term for a show-stopping song traditionally sung near the end of a musical): Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides, Now, that heartrending rumination on the uncertainties of life and surrendering to reality, as Mitchell once put it. Lauchengco’s version fully captured the emotional sweep of the song, almost as if its evocations of “ice cream castles in the air and feathered canyons everywhere,” its repeated declarations of not knowing love—and life—at all, were written especially for him.

Most touching moment

For me, though, the most touching moment unfolded quite early in the concert. It was when Lauchengco shared the stage with his daughter Natalie for a duet of Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You, the song somehow transposed to a more intimate arrangement, seemingly scrubbed clean of its celebrity status in the world of ballads.

That number made me think about the way Lauchengco managed to bridge generations that night—the way his voice and his presence harked back to the glory days of ‘70s and ‘80s OPM, full decades before Sarah Geronimo and Moira Dela Torre, Ben&Ben and Cup of Joe, while somehow still coming across as a contemporary of those present-day household names. Listening to Lauchengco and his daughter—“Dalaga na siya,” quipped the man next to me—you’d think they were singing the latest sleeper hit on Spotify.

I’m not actually even sure when it was exactly that I became concretely aware of Lauchengco as a figure of the Philippine music industry—though I do remember that his iconic Farewell, which first made a splash through his movie Bagets in 1984, was something my high school in Iloilo City made its outgoing seniors sing during the graduation ball every year.

That night at Solaire, probably 90 percent of the audience belonged to the generation that came of age or who were in their youth just as Lauchengco was at the peak of his career. A whole contingent even traveled all the way from Ilocos, their appointed leader—someone named Candy—holding up a self-illuminating sign that said, “I love Raymond,” when Lauchengco asked them to join him upfront for I Need You Back.

I guess it also spoke volumes about the audience demographic that Seguerra’s entrance was met partly with a rumble of surprise from the crowd, who were no doubt confused by Lauchengco’s use of the pronouns he and him to introduce the singer—and were probably deadnaming Seguerra in their heads.

Idling at the lobby before the concert started, I happened to sit next to a guy with salt-and-pepper hair who took one look at me and jokingly said, “You’re too young to be watching this.” 

Fair point. It was my first time to see Lauchengco perform live, after all, while most everyone around me had long had his songs ingrained in their heads. But it was also as perfect a night as any to affirm the truth behind the concert’s title: Everybody loves Raymond, indeed.