Diarist Review: Virgin Labfest 21

Back at it again after... six years?! The website version here.

*     *     *     *     *

Virgin Labfest 21: Best play—'Elehiya' by Dustin Celestino

The men of Elehiya at curtain call.

The best play in this year’s Virgin Labfest was not written by a virgin playwright. That’s hardly a surprise, of course: The point of the festival, as its famous slogan proclaims, is the presentation of “untried” and “untested” material, regardless of the author’s career stage. Once upon a time, even the late Floy Quintos and the festival’s founding artistic director Rody Vera appeared in the lineup with their latest, unproduced works.

It just so happens that, in the Labfest’s 21st edition (concluding June 28 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex), the gulf between the most accomplished works and the weaker offerings feels especially vast.

Elehiya

That best play is Elehiya by Dustin Celestino. 

Over the past decade, Celestino has made a career out of “scrutinizing machismo and Filipino patriarchy,” to quote Gibbs Cadiz, counting in his body of work the Labfest entries Mga Eksena sa Buhay ng Kontrabida (2018), Fermata (2022), and Ang Munting Liwanag sa Madilim na Sulok ng Isang Serbeserya sa Maynila (2024).

I missed Fermata; Eksena was a prescient examination of the unfounded “othering” endured by people accused of using drugs, even within their own families, arriving just two years into Duterte’s drug war.

Ang Munting Liwanag… felt like the saddest—but also the most fun—we’ve had of late in unpacking, understanding, and satirizing that rather elusive creature known as the modern DOM (or dirty old man).

And among his films, Habang Nilalamon ng Hydra ang Kasaysayan, recently released nationwide after a festival run in the 2025 Cinemalaya, stands out as the must-see entry.

Elehiya is easily Celestino’s most refined work to date. In brief, it’s a tale about men—distinctly Filipino men—and how generational notions of masculinity manifest in the smallest and most seemingly insignificant ways in their lives, tainting their relationships until the proverbial rot becomes too deep to undo.

If that summary sounds like a SparkNotes excerpt, it’s only in keeping with the play’s sensibilities: As the title suggests, Elehiya is a literal elegy, mourning the what-could-have-beens in two interconnected father-and-son stories, one situated slightly higher up the socioeconomic spectrum with all its concomitant stereotypical patterns of toxicity. Pushing the concept further, the play is written in the epistolary and confessional mode, composed by the sons to their unhearing fathers.

Though it sounds like an idea that GenZ would dismiss as “cringe,” the whole thing—not least the epistolary device—just works really, really well. The production helmed by Ron Capinding completely gives justice to Celestino’s method and style, the director summoning the playwright’s vision to elegant, psychologically incisive life. I’ve never been this invested in listening to brusko Pinoy men talk about themselves and their problems.

Therein lies the play’s genius: It transforms the exhausting banality of mansplaining into art—into theater. One son spills it all in a letter, another rants to his shrink, but in both stories, careening between hurtful past and hurting present, these men can only ever be honest to the void occupied by the audience. They bare it all, except to themselves and those most dear to their lives. The cold truth becomes a gift they ironically withhold from their loved ones.

Extending the metaphors further, designer Mark Lorenz situates the cast within a spare, brutalist set made of what looks like slabs of stone, while Monica Sebial and Sam Quizon dress the actors in Bilibid orange, as if these tormented inmates had wandered into an ancient altar of sorts, ready at long last to offer up their most sacred parts for strangers to partake of.

There’s hardly a shred of artifice in the ensemble Capinding has assembled—without a doubt, this festival’s strongest: Dennis Marasigan and Carlos Siguion-Reyna as the fathers, John Sanchez and Carlos’ real-life son Rafa as their progeny, with an exceptional Yan Yuzon as the narrator (a closing monologue has never landed this hard).

Onstage, these men fold years of muffled pain and heartbreak into 45 minutes of epiphany and liberation, ultimately culminating in something that must feel like catharsis. It may all be fiction, but the sound of quiet sobbing filling the theater by curtain call tells a completely different story—one that I suspect speaks more broadly to the familial intimacies of many Filipinos.

Patayin ang mga Surot

The other accomplished entry in this year’s Labfest is Floyd Scott Tiogangco’s Patayin ang mga Surot, directed with an unrelenting chop-chop rhythm by Lhorvie Nuevo-Tadioan.

I first encountered Tiogangco in 2020, during the festival’s unfortunate (and hopefully one-off) venture into Zoom theater at the height of the COVID lockdowns. Of the nine plays that year that were forcibly and prematurely converted into creatures of the screen, Tiogangco’s Pilot Episode was the most successful—“a brilliant explication of mental illness… compassionate in its portrayal of the cycle of helplessness that hounds not just the patient, but also the patient’s loved ones, to an almost normalized degree,” I wrote back then. That play had great help transitioning to the screen from director Giancarlo Abrahan, and starred a terrific, heartrending Phi Palmos as the protagonist living with bipolar disorder.

Tiogangco returns to the Labfest with a compelling addition to the works of art chronicling and psychoanalyzing the Duterte years—in this instance, that nightmarish, kismet-like juncture when the Philippines was about to transition from one despicable first family to another (in other words, the final night of Duterte’s presidency).

We find ourselves in the ramshackle dwelling of a couple waiting for their son to come home for his birthday celebration. The husband/father was recently released from jail on drug-related charges; the wife/mother is so, so thankful to Tatay Digong for the drug war that, in her view, brought a lot of good to the country.

As a medical anthropologist, I’ve spent a good amount of time studying Duterte’s anti-drug and anti-poor crusade, alongside colleagues such as Gideon Lasco, Jayeel Cornelio, Mary Racelis, Ica Fernandez, and Lee Yarcia. Patayin ang mga Surot is the first play I’ve watched that doesn’t feel the least bit strained in its explication of the drug war’s divisive impact on the communities, as if it had immersed itself in the academic literature and churned out a readily intelligible distillation of lived reality.

This is literally Japanese scholar Wataru Kusaka’s work on how certain poor communities managed—against confounding odds—to justify and even champion the drug war that was decimating their own.

Nuevo-Tadioan’s production is very, very funny—and also properly dirty (you can almost smell the sour stink of sweat, and feel the grime and humidity clinging to your skin)—with a laugh-a-minute star turn from Donna Cariaga as the pro-Duterte mother. If there’s one negative criticism to level against the play, though, it’s that it ends in the kind of tragedy that might feel inevitable for drug-war stories, but is in actuality rather unnecessary, and even self-defeating.

The 10 other plays

After Elehiya and Patayin ang mga Surot, Ron Evangelista’s She’s Electric is my distant third favorite. The play is the latest to ponder the question of artificial intelligence—specifically, that iffy, no-man’s-land scenario in which a real person falls in love with a robot.

Hollywood movies like Her and Ex Machina have long dealt with this what-if, of course, but what’s genuinely interesting about She’s Electric is how it situates that scenario within a modern Filipino context—and hurls all the thorny questions back at its own characters.

Notably, the play features the theatrical debuts of director JP Habac and actress Glaiza De Castro—who is terrific as the star of the films Sleepless (2015) and Liway (2018), but in this play, proves herself just as confident and commanding onstage.

As for the nine other festival entries: Lualhati, written by Gab Mactal (one of the translators of Tanghalang Ateneo’s triumphant Emilia last April), is a sapphic love story between two nuns, one of whom decides to pursue a life beyond the convent. The play touches on many familiar themes—faith, sexuality, and the messy, all-too-human in-betweens—but the writing and staging both somehow lack that sharp, edgy bite and sense of worldliness that would render the arguments thoroughly convincing.

The bright side: The production directed by Mara Marasigan has given us back Bea Garcia, who single-handedly supercharges the proceedings into life as the nun who “stays” (remember Garcia as Natalie in Atlantis’ Next to Normal?)

Elijah Felice Rosales’ Human Rights Story of the Year takes a jab at pat-on-the-back celebrity journalists (pun unintended, if you can spot it) and the murky ethical crossroads they might find themselves in, to the tune of award-winning drug war stories. But somewhere along the way, the play devolves into a tinnitus-inducing affair, its two characters (both writers) reduced to mouthpieces locked in a diva-off and sounding like, well, arguments strung together on sheets of paper. (The night I saw this production directed by Nelsito Gomez, the acting was rather stilted.)

Anthony Kim Vergara’s Password 123, Pilipinas 321 is a much-needed, radical dive into the world of big-time Pinoy scam operations, but it’s simply begging to be turned into an investigative essay (as a play, it seems way more interested in spewing kilometric facts and revelations, than in actual, human people).

Taksyapo!, written by comedian John Lapus, is nothing more than a fun time in the theater, to paraphrase Emil Hofileña—“a gay man and a carnival booth vendor throw plates at a wall” is really all there is to it—but it can also be aimless and, in the most counterproductive sense, matapobre (there are digs at laborers and people who use drugs that aren’t as funny as the writer may have thought.)

Faith Ferrer Lacanlale’s Betamax gets lost with the ostensibly fun concept of “woman starts seeing people with pig body parts,” but at least it proves that Jam Binay really is one of the funniest actresses working now.

Jerom Canlas’ Footprint, based on real events in the author’s life, is drowned out by Mikko Angeles’ manic, tech-addled direction, as well as bloated performances that sap the play of its honesty and emotional power (save for Elijah Canlas’—his unembellished turn as the grief-stricken protagonist is one of the festival’s most affecting).

Nik Azcuna’s Balos plunges the viewer right smack into a hospital during the foggy first day of the 2017 Siege of Marawi, but its singular focus on what I can only describe as Medical Ethics 101 debates unfortunately leaves the thornier and more interesting aspects of being a physician in that part of the country, during that specific period, underdeveloped. In a similar vein, Alab Usman’s Haram tries to patch together three snippets exploring Muslim queerness, but the result still feels largely elementary, if not contrived.

And Gerald Manuel’s Buhaghag, an otherwise straightforward and inventive anthropomorphism of depression, gets stuck rather quickly in the mental quicksand of its own invention (and has apparently mystified many a Boomer and Gen X-er).

Nevertheless, it’s heartening to look at the list of this year’s entries and find more unfamiliar names than familiar ones among the roster of playwrights. The Labfest may be about the material—but it’s also just as much about “untried,” “untested,” and especially “unstaged” writers: about discovering new names and providing a platform for new talent, especially for voices from beyond Metro Manila. I’ve droned on and on about the need for a more inclusive, expansive, and democratic theater landscape—and having the likes of Azcuna and Usman in this festival is, in fact, one concrete step toward realizing that goal.

And an even more encouraging development: For the first time since its inception, the Labfest is running for four weeks—and the performances have almost always played to full houses; it was packed every time I attended in its second week. Gone are the days when we had to make do with the puny provisions of the Tanghalang Huseng Batute. I don’t doubt that the growing involvement of celebrities like Lapus, De Castro, and Canlas, not to mention Angel Aquino in Lualhati, is a major factor driving this continuing surge in interest. Whatever the other reasons, one can only hope the festival sustains this momentum and attracts ever bigger audiences, cementing its place as a kind of annual pilgrimage in the theater calendar. 

TheaterFansManila Review: 'Pasiya' ('Every Male or Female'; 'People v. Dela Cruz') by The Corner Studio

My third guest review for TFM--the website version here!

*     *     *     *     *

'Pasiya' tackles the law, but doesn't sustain its case

Curtain call after Every Male or Female.

Although Pasiya seems, on the surface, to be preoccupied with law, its main interest clearly lies in history. Or, to be more precise, in situating law within moments of historical rupture—whether real or imagined—and recasting them as moments of melodrama.

 

The latest offering from The Corner Studio, Pasiya is a twin bill of one-act plays: the first, a new work titled Every Male or Female, and the second, the returning People v. Dela Cruz, which made its premiere in January this year. Both are penned and directed by Eldrin Veloso, who also acts in the second.

In both plays, Veloso places the audience in a sort of fork-in-the-road situation, in a time framed as historically significant and therefore necessarily imbued with the weight and gravity of such a temporal juncture. Then he zooms in on the human element, imagining how ordinary people come to terms with that juncture: How does one grapple with a time preordained as important?

To go by Veloso’s characters, there’s never a more perfect moment to be small and subsumed by the fallibility of human emotion. 

Every Male or Female

Of the two, Every Male or Female is evidently the more successful work. Set on the day of the 1935 constitutional plebiscite, which eventually ratified the new Constitution and established the Philippine Commonwealth, the play dangles a lose-lose situation to its three women characters: Voting yes in the plebiscite will bring the country one step closer toward independence, but it might also mean losing their hard-won right of suffrage as women under a largely Pinoy-run Commonwealth (which was exactly what happened at the start of that era); voting no, or not voting at all, will preserve their right of suffrage—but keep them shackled as subjects of America. 

The play is a breezy 30 minutes—and in that half-hour span, a lunchtime gathering predictably, and deliciously, devolves into chaos. Veloso uses his three characters as avatars for conflicting—but no less valid—points of view, all of which bring the present-day audience closer to understanding the fears and anxieties that women at the time might have harbored. Hilda (Rain de Jesus) is a staunch non-voter; Esperanza (Althea Aruta) is a sunny yes vote; and caught in between are the elder Pacita (Carla Martinez) and Hilda’s daughter Felisa (Vea Noroña), who has a new suitor. (That the presence of this suitor in their lives inevitably influences the characters’ stances should go without saying.) 

To a certain extent, the play succeeds in evoking a harmonious look and feel—the 1930s rendered intentionally anachronistic through occasional contemporary slips in language and the acting styles of its ensemble, in a way portending the slow, winding road to genuine progress in women’s rights. De Jesus, in particular, can be quite gripping in her best moments: a visibly modern woman paradoxically chained to the past.

On the whole, however, the play still feels too loose to be truly compelling drama: more a surprisingly effective first stab at the material than a cohesive work of art. It has many things to say, a lot of them meaningful, but it’s still working toward becoming the best speaker in the room. 

People v. Dela Cruz

This looseness in theater-making is even more glaring in the second, and longer, play. Whereas Every Male or Female casts its gaze toward the past, People v. Dela Cruz looks to the future, imagining a Philippines with a jury system. The story itself is set in the backroom discussions of the country’s first jury trial deliberations, revolving around a case of Duterte-style nanlaban that makes the play seem as though it were unfolding in the present.

Judging by TheaterFansManila.com editor-in-chief Nikki Francisco’s review of the original run, little has changed in the play. It’s still Veloso “staging a room full of people he clearly doesn’t think could jury a case… and letting them confirm his suspicion.” In fact, the existence of the jury is only a device; the real priority of this play lies in corralling a group of problematic individuals, each with their own stereotypical quirks and assigned issues, and watching them explode in this pressure-cooker scenario. 

Francisco describes the play as “headed for a mistrial,” but to my mind, it’s already a mistrial from the start—the point being the gradual uncovering of the loud, wearying whys over the course of an hour. That resort to comfortable narrative predictability unfortunately proves to be the play’s fatal flaw.

The Corner Studio and ‘small’ theater

Hopefully, neither play—particularly the second—represents its definitive version. The productions themselves are also staged with the kind of spareness that detracts from the world-building—not so much a lack of design as a distracting absence in areas where it is most needed (for instance, sound). 

But there’s also something meaningful to be gleaned from this spareness: Pasiya is staged in a space that was obviously not intended to be a theater. The venue is a mixed-use site serving other purposes during the day, an office or function room and shelves housing interior-design bric-a-brac. And the production company itself has been staging theater for only two years, this twin bill being its third offering.    

If anything, this scrappy, DIY-coded brand of ‘small’ theater is not only a welcome antidote, but an indispensable complement, to the mainstream, with its flashy venues and splashy production values. Here, The Corner Studio has much in common with the likes of Artist Playground, Mad Child Productions, Scene Change, and Company of Actors in Streamlined Theatre—for whom experimentation is not treated as a gamble to be altogether avoided, and testing new material is second nature. 

In a landscape constantly pulled between the imperative to make consequential theater and the practical need to make, well, money, these small companies have never been more essential—almost an existential lifeline, to be honest, if only for the kind of liberating spaces they afford artists.

In this sense, at least, one can deliver a fairly firm verdict on Pasiya.

Diarist Review: 'Man of La Mancha' by Repertory Philippines

This came out Friday the 12th in The Diarist--here.

*     *     *     *     *

Man of La Mancha: Nelsito Gomez assembles one of the most intelligent cast performances of 2026

Curtain call, June 7 matinee.

If theater is the art of looking at ourselves, then I must say I felt pretty seen by Steven Hotchkiss in Repertory Philippines’s (Rep) revival of Man of La Mancha.

In the 1965 Broadway musical freely adapted from the Spanish national epic Don Quixote, Hotchkiss plays the priest known only as Padre. But his most revealing work happens much earlier in the show, long before he even dons his brown frock.

The musical is a play within a play, told from the perspective of an incarcerated Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. In their holding cell, Cervantes and his manservant are subjected to a mock trial by their fellow prisoners, who demand that the two surrender the trunk of possessions they’ve brought with them unless the former is found not guilty of being “an idealist, a bad poet, and an honest man,” as one prisoner phrased the make-believe charges.

At Cervantes’ suggestion, the mock trial that unfolds becomes a (not-so-faithful) dramatization of the Cervantes epic itself, with the author taking on the role of the aging protagonist Alonso Quijano, who reinvents himself as the titular knight and sets off on a fool’s adventure with his loyal squire Sancho Panza (the manservant now playing his counterpart from the novel).

In the Broadway musical’s original script, the fictionalized Cervantes’ incarceration occurs against the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition in the late 16th century. But Rep’s currently running version, directed and conceptualized by Nelsito Gomez, transposes this “real world” into our present, with Cervantes and his fellow prisoners in modern dress, and corralled “inside” the stage by a massive chain-link fence that dominates the opening scenery.

Echoes of Donald Trump’s ICE and Israel’s torture camps, with their attendant air of pervasive intolerance and disregard for basic humanity, are unmistakable—a dramaturgical choice reinforced by the fact that almost none of Cervantes’ fellow prisoners are simultaneously male, straight, and White.

When Cervantes springs the idea of mounting his defense in the form of a play, Hotchkiss’ prisoner is evidently one of those less inclined to participate—not so much hesitant as wholly uninterested. Even when the theatrical proceedings have started, with Cervantes/Quijano and Sancho putting on a literal show for the holding cell like a traveling double act, Hotchkiss keeps mostly to himself—eyeing the shenanigans from a careful, judgmental distance—the expression on his face a perfect mix of “What are these fools up to now?” and “I can’t wait to see how this tomfoolery turns out.” And really, who can blame him?

Challenging fascism

The original message of La Mancha about the power of the creative mind in challenging fascism and authoritarianism—and consequently, its depiction of the harassment and persecution that writers and other artists have long suffered at the hands of those who wish to silence them—comes through quite clearly enough.

But the musical also delivers all of this in a manner most worthy of a million eye rolls. The idea serving as the musical’s dramatic impetus is, for lack of a better word, silly. So silly, in fact, that I feel like only the most earnest, sheltered writer could have dreamed it up. No wonder Hotchkiss’ spectator is so over it before the whole thing has even begun. And, well, you and me both, brother.

Why on earth are we having this pretend play in a fascist holding cell? That’s the obstacle of an idea one must overcome to even appreciate this musical—and the production itself.

The imposition for make-believe comes across as a very liberal, near-fantastical notion of what social justice looks like, as if whipped up by the kind of privileged White people who fancy themselves “on the right side of history” and “on the left side of the political spectrum,” but can’t be bothered to join an actual protest on the streets. Meanwhile, artists like newly minted Tony winner Ali Louis Bourzgui, who used his acceptance speech during the June 7 awards ceremonies to call out the billionaires, Zionists, and colonizers on a global platform—at great risk to his career, no doubt—are actually being silenced.

I’d like to think Hotchkiss’ character’s disenchanted state of mind extends toward the musical’s idealistic (because detached) and romantic (because possibly delusional) bent. Not for nothing did this musical give us The Impossible Dream, one of those Broadway anthems that even the least theatrically inclined is bound to recognize, though probably not for its stage origins. That strange smell in the theater is La Mancha itself, as if it has just been yanked out of your grandparents’ closet, where it has no doubt been gathering dust and mold.

Credit where credit is due, then: To the best of his ability, Gomez has tried to make La Mancha not just worth our while, but also worth listening to (which is a feat, given that it doesn’t exactly have the most memorable score in the Broadway canon). At various points in the show, I was honestly just so bored and out of it—unable to take seriously what I was watching—but at other points, I also found myself moved to tears.

Gomez has assembled a cast that features some of the most thrilling—and most intelligent—musical theater performances of the year thus far. The musical direction by Farley Asuncion, who commands a live band onstage, is one of the crispest I’ve heard in a while, managing to evoke so much through the sparest music (and, dare I say it, coming the closest among all the artistic elements to capturing the romanticism of the material without crossing over to histrionic territory).

And, despite its fundamental imperfections, the set by Julio Garcia does a lot of the heavy lifting in pushing the production’s metaphors, as the stage’s three walls slowly levitate (and distractingly wobble while afloat) to reveal the play within the play. (To this end, I have to point out that D Cortezano’s lighting here is one of his less impressive works; when I saw the show, the lights rather felt all over the place and out of sorts with the rest of the production’s vibe.)

Moving experience

Whether intentional or not with regards to the direction, Gomez’s La Mancha all comes together and becomes quite a moving experience whenever it stops insisting on its artifice. Especially toward the end, when it just keeps things real and sincere, shedding off the masquerade it’s been feeding the audience for the last hour and a half, this production is able to arrive at a genuinely touching place.

It pleads its case for love, acceptance, and simple human goodness with such conviction that one is swept up entirely in its arguments. And its best performers become exemplars of timeless authenticity, no longer hazy figures roaming this forcibly sketched landscape, but flesh-and-blood creatures who could very well have come from one of the seats in the house.

In fact, we already get a glimpse of that authenticity early in the show, during one of the production’s high points, in which Hotchkiss, Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante, and Sarah Facuri sing as the priest, Quijano’s niece, and Quijano’s housekeeper, respectively. As Sancho Panza, Marvin Ong is able to make the squire’s loyalty to his master believable—sometimes pityingly so, like a brainless, sentient thing programmed to be loyal and nothing else. And though I found her performance rather thin and wobbly at the start, Katrine Sunga (as Quijano’s romantic interest Aldonza/Dulcinea) is nevertheless able to conjure an emotional whirlwind in the latter half of the musical, turning the climactic scene into an undeniable tearjerker.

   

The beating heart and stabilizing spirit of this production, though, is Nonie Buencamino as Quijano/Quixote. That may seem self-evident, but there’s bewitching method to the actor’s madness: Buencamino is the farthest thing from a romantic, chivalrous, classical leading man—so convincing as a crazy, reclusive artist who’s found himself in the enemy’s crosshairs, and now left without a choice but to indulge the fascists for his own survival.

To pull this off, Buencamino becomes both star and character actor—a balancing act he achieves with what appears to be the least effort. And it’s through this balancing act that Buencamino injects his very conspicuous humanity into a production otherwise animated by sometimes clashing narrative impulses. Through him, this production achieves its fullest potential: a show rid of its rose-tinted glasses, stripped of its lofty fantasies, and finally, firmly planted in a reality it has no choice but to grapple with.

Thanks to Buencamino, this La Mancha somehow inches closer and closer toward realizing its elusive, hackneyed impossible dreams.

Diarist Review: 'Jesus Christ Superstar' - The 2016 Regent's Park Open Air Theatre Revival in Manila

I still think Cats is Andrew Lloyd Webber's best work--I'll die on this hill gladly. The website version of this review here.

*     *     *     *     *

Jesus Christ Superstar blows the theater roof off

Pre-Act I view of the stage.

The first time I saw anyone blow the roof off the theater with anything from Jesus Christ Superstar was in October 2014.

That was Bituin Escalante at Cultural Center of the Philippines, where her solo concert Everything in Bituin closed out season two of the Triple Threats series.

Escalante was a force of nature that evening: scorching in Cole Porter’s Find Me a Primitive Man, dynamite in Proud Mary. The unbeatable highlight, though, was her medley from Jesus Christ Superstar, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s landmark rock musical retelling of the Passion of Christ.

In the 2001 Manila staging directed by the late Bobby Garcia for Atlantis Productions, Escalante had played Mary Magdalene. Naturally, for the concert, she sang Mary’s signature number, the chart-topping I Don’t Know How to Love Him.

Midway through the song, however, Escalante shifted gears and launched into Heaven on Their Minds—the big solo of Judas Iscariot that opens the musical. It was a moment of seismic energy: “an earthshaking, sea-parting rendition,” I wrote for The Philippine Daily Inquirer, that made “musical theater worshipers in the house shoot up from their seats” and sent “everybody’s ears (into) a kind of auditory orgasm.”

What better word to capture the sheer thrill of Escalante’s performance than the Tagalog “halimaw”? A gender-bent production of the musical, starring Escalante as Judas, should have been in order. (Spoiler alert: It’s yet to happen.)

Ten years later—and over 6,000 km southeast of Manila—I met Escalante’s spiritual successor.

It was December 2024. At the Capitol Theatre in Sydney, Australia, the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre revival of Jesus Christ Superstar was a month into the first leg of its tri-city Australian tour. The production had reigned supreme during the 2016–2017 London theater season, winning Best Musical Revival at the Olivier Awards and Best Musical at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

I absolutely adored this production directed by Timothy Sheader, despite the stale, musty smell of the house. It was hot, fresh, electric, triumphantly deploying the grammar of street style and the lexicon of the pop-rock concert to render a musical from the 1970s unmistakably now. In hoodies, sweats, and sneakers, the ensemble looked like a hip-hop crew. They danced like a hip-hop crew (Drew McOnie’s choreography, with its cyclic use of staccatos and crescendoes, was oddly hypnotic). The set, dominated by a downward-sloping, cross-shaped platform—as if a ginormous crucifix had fallen from the sky—and the lights, repeatedly blazing and in-your-face, all seemed to gesture toward some divine concert in progress.

Unabashedly queer

And every now and then, the production turned toward the unabashedly queer: the character of Herod engulfed in a cascading cape of scintillating gold; the bare-chested Sanhedrin in flowy, grey cloaks, twirling their pastoral staffs (that doubled as microphones) like butch drag queens in a glamour act; Judas getting his hands coated in dripping, shimmering silver during his infamous betrayal of Christ; the lashing of Jesus enacted with—of all things—bursts of glitter! For an age-old story involving a literal coronation, the Passion was now even more baklà—and all the better for it.

At the center of it all was Michael Paynter, former contestant of The Voice Australia, who essayed the musical’s titular role.

Paynter’s boyish charm and carefree approach to the part aptly encapsulated the most vital question this Jesus Christ Superstar seemed intent on answering: What if the son of God were Justin Bieber? The whole pop-rock concert aesthetic made perfect sense with his interpretation.

Then, there was Paynter’s Gethsemane—Jesus’ big number in Act II. To this day, I’m still thinking about this specific performance. It’s the very definition of show-stopping: Paynter scaling the punishing notes in the song’s second half as if he’d been singing the score since birth, promptly earning a mid-show standing ovation from the hysterical audience (the evidence is afloat on YouTube). It’s one of the very few times I’ve seen a show stopped cold.

The only downside to this production was that Jesus’ dynamic with Judas—the musical’s key relationship—felt a bit askew. Javon King’s Judas, a riffing twink with a restless skip in his step, was inadvertently swallowed whole by Paynter’s Jesus (to King’s credit, nobody could have possibly survived the latter’s Gethsemane).

So, more than anything, it was this sense of imbalance that I was wary of while watching Jesus Christ Superstar at The Theatre at Solaire. (The same production from London and Australia has finally arrived in the Philippines, care of GMG Productions and is down to its final week of performances.)

I’m happy to report that, based on the May 16 evening performance I caught, this unevenness is nowhere to be found.

Tip-top shape

The production itself is in tip-top shape, with all the elements that made it terrific theater in Sydney intact. But in place of Paynter, we have a British Jesus in Luke Street. Even with, or perhaps because of, his silly little mustache (a compliment!), Street looks like someone barely out of his teens. My colleague Gibbs Cadiz compares him to American pop star Benson Boone, which I think is an accurate assessment. And his earnest, happy-to-be-here demeanor has a Trojan Horse-like effect: Street’s Gethsemane, a roof-rattling take, also feels like a genuine internal breakdown that happens within the world of the musical—not an out-of-show and out-of-body experience like Paynter’s. Street thoroughly embodies the momentary agony of this made-mortal son of God.

Opposite him, King is a worthy non-adversary—he’s even better now than when I saw him in Sydney: fiercer and sassier, galloping across that stage as if possessed by the spirit of Tina Turner. At one point, King even has it out with a saxophone feature. And his interactions with Gab Pangilinan’s Mary are all imbued with the frisson of a proper diva-off, which, if you really think about it, is nothing if not appropriare for a country that loves its telesérye and sampálan scenes onscreen. The two could give Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos at the end of Ishmael Bernal’s Ikaw Ay Akin a run for their money; if they went for each other’s wigs, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s the Passion as a spicy love triangle.

A shame, then, that the production hasn’t gained as much traction with Filipino theatergoers as other GMG shows that sold out their runs. In the era of jukebox musicals, this version of Jesus Christ Superstar is an exhilarating testament to the heights that original musical theater can attain. For those who’ve never seen the show, it’s an excellent introduction to the material. At its most breathtaking, it easily blows the roof off The Theatre at Solaire.