PDI Review: 'One More Chance' by PETA; 'Bar Boys' by Barefoot Theatre Collaborative; 'Buruguduystunstugudunstuy' by Full House Theater Company

Wrote about three shows. It's really the summer of our theater-loving hearts' content.

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3 new original Filipino musicals pack in the crowds

Curtain call at 'One More Chance' with Sam Concepcion.

Only two years ago, Manila theater was still groping its way to a sustainable reopening from the COVID lockdowns. Now, it may well be having its biggest year yet. 

In the last three months, six professional productions have been playing near-simultaneously to oftentimes packed houses. Four of them—Peta’s “One More Chance, The Musical,” Barefoot Theatre Collaborative’s “Bar Boys,” Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Pingkian” and the touring production of “Miss Saigon”—sold out their respective runs. It’s a feat unheard of in recent memory. 

‘One More Chance, The Musical’ 

“One More Chance” holds the even rarer distinction of selling out its entire three-month run before opening—a first in the Philippine Educational Theater Association (Peta) history. No doubt, pedigree aided this mammoth success: The musical’s eponymous source material is only one of the biggest romcoms of the 2000s, starring John Lloyd Cruz as Popoy and Bea Alonzo as Basha. 

Thankfully, the musical has rectified the movie’s faults and kept things real. Eluding blind fandom worship, Michelle Ngu-Nario’s adaptation stresses the toxicity of its protagonists’ relationship and makes no excuses for Popoy’s red flags, instead exposing him for the possessive, insecure man that he is. With Popoy and Basha now (almost) on equal footing, the story becomes a clear warning against putting up with an awful partner. 

Already a retooled version, the performance I caught still hit three hours. Yet, the production actually felt tight—if anything, proof that this show works. 

Its excesses can be obvious—for instance, portions of Michael Barry Que’s choreography that only dull the show’s momentum. But at its best, the show’s overindulgent quality also becomes its asset. When Neomi Gonzales rolls in a riot as a faux-assimilated balikbayan from Korea, or when Via Antonio launches into one of her hilarious diatribes, you wish the scene would keep going. 

Directed by Maribel Legarda, this production scours the agonies and ecstasies of imperfect love in the hands of a very capable cast. Stars are literally born in CJ Navato (as Popoy) and Nicole Omillo (as Basha), each making a theater debut of compelling technical and emotional precision. It’s the utmost praise to say their pairing makes you forget the movie even exists. 

(Update: I've seen the show a second time. Sam Concepcion's Popoy is my current pick for stage performance of the year so far: It's simply a consummate leading-man turn, his triple-threat skills on full, marvelous display. And so rare, as well, to see a performance whose main currency is physicality. Bravo!)

(Correction: This isn't Navato's theater debut. He already performed in Peta's "Charot!" in 2019.)

Most crucial is the musical’s intelligent use of the band Ben&Ben’s songs to tell its story, further attesting to musical director Myke Salomon’s mastery of the jukebox musical genre. Here, Salomon pulls few surprises, but his work is seamless, resulting in a musical that’s flush with all the right emotions in all the right places. 

‘Bar Boys’ 

In the recently concluded “Bar Boys,” Salomon composed his first original score for Pat Valera’s adaptation of the eponymous 2017 film. Together, Valera (also colyricist) and Salomon have made a work that could be unnecessarily busy and repetitive, evincing spots in glaring need of editing. 

However, this musical was also almost miraculous in the way it improved upon the source material without losing its essence. The movie, about four men aspiring to be lawyers, hardly made anything cohesively meaningful out of the tropes and issues crammed into it. Building on that structure, Valera has written a thoughtful rumination about justice, manhood and personhood in Marcos Jr.’s Philippines. 

At three hours, the production seemingly imbibed the frenetic energy of law students cramming for an exam. Most bothersome were the venue’s acoustics: Where I sat, it felt like being pummeled by sound. 

Nonetheless, one left this show convinced by the earnestness of the sheer talent on display, and the musical’s unrelenting belief in the little guy’s potential to fight for change despite the daunting odds. 

As the financially strapped Erik, Benedix Ramos was a revelation. Ramos not only aced a delicate balancing act of standing out while being part of a quartet; his performance of the story’s underdog also became a forceful, unifying persona of the musical’s themes—the bar boy, as it were. And in supporting parts, Sheila Francisco (as a stern professor) and Juliene Mendoza (as Ramos’ stage father) were peerless in their command of the grammar of musical theater. 

‘Buruguduystunstugudunstuy’ 

Meanwhile, at Newport World Resorts, Full House Theater Company has premiered “Buruguduystunstugudunstuy,” the jukebox musical built on the songs of Parokya ni Edgar. Fancying itself a feminist paean, the musical concerns four women who are magically transported to a distinctly Filipino fantasyland, where they undergo journeys of self-discovery. 

Evidently, budget’s not a problem: Dexter Santos’ production is a sensorial feast, maximizing its venue’s massive stage and LED capabilities to evoke its disparate storylands. GA Fallarme and Joyce Garcia’s video design is the best this theater has seen. Stephen Viñas’ choreography fulfills Santos’ ambitions of physical spectacle. And Raven Ong’s costumes alone are worth the price of admission: In one scene, out of plastic bags and garbage, Ong conjures gowns fit for the biggest stages of drag. 

All for what, though? Thrillingly inane in Act I, the musical stumbles in its thematic labyrinth and disintegrates in Act II. It’s “feminism” by way of insultingly hokey lessons, with playwright Rody Vera not only sneaking in an outdated male-rape joke into the script, but also somehow bungling the gender politics: For all the purported feminism, it’s never made clear if one of the protagonists is lesbian or trans, as if this musical thought those two identities were the same. 

Musical director Ejay Yatco’s adaptation of the Parokya discography isn’t entirely successful, either. The most successful jukebox musicals make preloved songs sound like they’ve been made for the musical, not shoehorned into it. Here, Yatco’s haphazard work only convinces you of Parokya’s incompatibility with coherent musical storytelling. 

Moments of comedic brilliance are few and far between, chiefly through the performances of Pepe Herrera, Noel Comia Jr., Tex Ordoñez-de Leon and Jillian Ita-as delivering my favorite blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of the year so far, as a schoolteacher early in Act I. In the end—in keeping with its mouthful of a title—this musical only feels endless and exhausting. 

Familiar material 

Still, attention must be paid to the fact that all three shows—all original Filipino works, it bears emphasis—have been running at the same time and filling up their houses. Chalking this all up to “revenge theater”—to audiences’ presumed hunger for live performance post-COVID—seems a too-easy recourse. 

A better framing might be: People flock to material they are familiar with. Not only does it help explain why “Miss Saigon” was a hit; it also accounts for the unprecedented success of “One More Chance” and “Buruguduy’s” popularity. 

It also underscores the constant need to liberate our theater. Accessibility is a negotiated process. To build a genuinely interested audience—beyond Metro Manila’s loyal minority—one may need to start from what people already know, before aiming for what one wants them to watch. 

When Newport’s “Ang Huling El Bimbo” was streamed online for 48 hours in 2020 as a pandemic fundraiser, it hit seven million views. A pirated recording circulated online. Fan accounts (of people involved in the show) were born. One can only wonder how many people ended up watching “Bar Boys,” “Buruguduy,” 9 Works Theatrical’s “Rent,” or Barefoot’s “Mula sa Buwan” and “The Last Five Years” simply because “El Bimbo” alumni were involved in those shows. 

Twelve years is also a lot of time for change. A new generation has come of age, so to speak, with money to spare for trips to the theater. Here, writer Exie Abola was right on the money in saying that theater must also be thought of as “a commercial enterprise,” and not just an artistic one. How do we get people with money to not just choose the theater, but be excited about it? 

In this aspect, Peta made an ingenious move partnering with many corporations to market “One More Chance” and help turn it into a summer blockbuster. 

And I’ll never tire of saying this: Barefoot has perfected the art of selling a show. Their whole thing begins from the show’s announcement. And while some companies still struggle with social media, Barefoot has embraced it. 

These are all just partial answers, of course. But the confluence of 2024’s sold-out productions demands further introspection. This is what we want the state of local theater to be all the time. The question now is how to replicate and maintain it. 

PDI Review: 'Rent' by 9 Works Theatrical

Look who's back in the Inquirer. (Crazy turn of events these past few years, but here we are.) I'll post a link to the website(?) version if and when I find out how. Anyway, I saw this show twice and liked it even less the second time around. I also want to point out that it's somehow indicative of how much time has passed that the first three plays I saw in Manila when I first moved there have all been restaged already.

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'Rent' is due: Spectacular at times, but sorely misses the point

The 2024 cast of 9 Works Theatrical's 'Rent' on media night curtain call, joined by members of the 2010 cast.

Fourteen years since it was last mounted professionally in Metro Manila, Jonathan Larson’s “Rent” is back at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, Makati City, once again produced by 9 Works Theatrical and directed by Robbie Guevara. 

This return is much welcome: For a new generation of Filipino theatergoers (no doubt brought up on “Hamilton” and “Dear Evan Hansen”), it is a rare chance to see what The New York Times once hailed as a work that “shimmers with hope for the future of the American musical.” 

What audiences have actually been seeing, however, is a production that looks spectacular at times, sounds terrific for the most part—but sorely misses the point of Larson’s work. 

The simple key to understanding “Rent” is in its opening, titular song: “We’re hungry and frozen/ Some life that we’ve chosen,” sings its two principal characters, Roger and Mark. Both impoverished artists at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City, they embody what it means to be alive despite the odds. Their apartment has no heating in winter; they always barely have enough money; unwelcome developers are gentrifying their neighborhood; and an untreatable disease is decimating their community. 

Such is the world of hardship and injustice they and their self-proclaimed bohemian friends must fight against and survive. 

Yet, in Guevara’s take-two on this musical, that primal hunger to keep on living even amid the direst circumstances is largely absent. Swaddled in runway-ready fast fashion, the performers of this “Rent” cosplay an idea of eking out a living; of struggling with poverty and disease; of defying the claws of gentrification in their neighborhood. 

One hardly grasps the genuine despair hounding Larson’s characters on paper, almost as if this production has never met an impoverished person in real life. 

Mere spectacle 

The shallowness of its supposed evocations of hardship becomes all the more glaring when one considers this production’s directorial priorities. Given the continuous rise of HIV cases in the Philippines, Guevara has intended to put HIV front and center in this production—an “in your face” treatment, as he put it. 

In theory, it’s an admirable, worthy, even timely cause. Onstage, however, it has resulted in the reduction of poverty and disease to mere spectacle. In one sequence where the characters sing about their existential fears (“Will I lose my dignity?/ Will someone care?/ Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?”), Guevara choreographs a literal tableau of suffering. On Mio Infante’s multistory, scaffolding set, the actors have been arranged as if on museum display cases: In one “box,” someone violently dies of AIDS; in another, someone—presumably addicted to drugs—visibly struggles with the temptation of injecting a needle. 

This spectacularization of disease and poverty crescendos in the production’s interpretation of the character of Mimi. Mark and Roger’s neighbor (and Roger’s eventual love interest), Mimi is a striptease dancer living with HIV and addicted to heroin. In this production, she appears to be just that—reduced to her addiction and disease. In almost every scene, she is portrayed as drunk, high or a combination of both. In her Act II solo “Without You,” a song about the myriad difficulties of sustaining love and relationships, this production has her starting the song by—no kidding—singing to a small baggie of heroin. 

Such exoticizing touches imbue this production with distracting literal-mindedness. More significantly, they only highlight how this “Rent” is antithetical to the spirit of Larson’s work. The point of the musical is to humanize the ones who struggle with disease, addiction and poverty; this production gawks at its characters with the bright-eyed curiosity of privileged kids on an “immersive” school trip to a slum. 

To this production’s credit, it features what should go down as some of the year’s most thrilling voices: for example, theater newbie Garrett Bolden’s in the role of Tom Collins, Mark and Roger’s “anarchist” professor friend. 

But, again, under Guevara’s ministrations, Bolden and almost every one of his cast mates are unable to embody their characters’ deepest hurts and troubles. Most troubling is the inert central relationship between Anthony Rosaldo’s Roger and Thea Astley’s Mimi (the former in only his second theater role, the latter in her stage debut). 

Both struggling with HIV, Roger and Mimi strike up a relationship on borrowed time, epitomizing the musicals’ “no day but today” ethos. In Rosaldo and Astley’s hands, this relationship unfortunately never goes beyond the surface, leaving the audience bereft of the crucial emotional scaffold to hold on to throughout this musical. 

Tokenistic gesture 

Surprisingly, the task of instilling dramatic depth to this “Rent” has fallen on the laps of the two actors portraying Mark, the narrator, everyman and constant witness to the crumbling relationships in the story. 

Mark himself undergoes an existential crisis of his own throughout the musical—one so convincingly fleshed out, in their respective ways, by Reb Atadero and Ian Pangilinan. In their hands, Mark becomes the most compelling character in the story, a real person who’s only trying to help sort out his friends’ sadnesses while fighting his own. 

It’s also worth mentioning that on the night I saw him, Atadero singlehandedly delivered a crash course on clarity in stage performance. 

And appearing in only a few scenes, Lance Reblando is sensational as the drag performer Angel, stealing the show especially in her gravity-defying take of “Today 4 U.” 

Alas, the presences of Atadero, Pangilinan and Reblando are never enough to conceal this production’s shortcomings. Too often, this “Rent” sacrifices literal clarity in favor of literal spectacle. The big Act I group number “Christmas Bells” makes clever use of none of the show’s technical assets to, for starters, better identify who’s singing what line and where on the brightly lit stage, instead pouring its energies into a snow machine. 

At three levels, Infante’s set is so structurally convoluted, performers literally disappear in it navigating its stairs and corners for longer than necessary, even when they are singing. Shakira Villa-Symes’ occasionally ostentatious lighting has a penchant for evoking an actual rock concert more than the world of the musical. 

Meanwhile, an arrangement of chairs in the colors of the rainbow—an obvious nod to the LGBTQIA+ community, who are an integral part of this musical—appears in exactly two parts of the show, becoming a tokenistic gesture designed to end up in social media posts. 

Those chairs also speak to the larger ethos of this “Rent”: a nice treat to the senses that never goes below the surface. It’s no day but today for a filtered Instagram post.