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!”
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