REVIEW: The marketing satire ‘Tententenen’ struggles to match its comedy to its drama

REVIEW: The marketing satire ‘Tententenen’ struggles to match its comedy to its drama

“Though it’s clearly well-researched, Teatro Marco’s new play also has difficulty using its limited space and articulating itself in more creative ways.”

 

Finding the right form for a given message is crucial to the success of theater and of marketing, which is the language spoken by Teatro Marco’s new comedy, Tententenen. In the play, the team behind Bubu Beauty Company begins to turn against one another while struggling to maintain the brand’s relevance. As they execute various campaigns to communicate their brand message—leaning into whatever they think would play well to a digital audience—they also end up sacrificing their own dignity.

The show is clearly well-researched, with a satirical bite that rings true for all sorts of professional fields. However, its potent ideas haven’t yet found an ideal form. Despite the production’s sincere efforts, it has difficulty making use of its limited space and articulating itself through more creative means. And its jokes are frequently too easy and not particularly clever, especially when compared to the promise shown by its more dramatic elements.

Conflict with comedy

Playwright and director Mark Ghosn’s experience in the marketing industry is evident in how much detail fills his script. All of Tententenen‘s talk about activations and strategy never becomes esoteric; if anything, it only leads to a more thorough awareness of how every level of an organization can become obsessively structured towards profit above all else. It’s a systemic ill that causes every character to sell their own identities, no matter how well-intentioned they may have been on their first days on the job. Even within its modest means, the play is an effective satire of how dehumanizing influencer-driven social media marketing can be.

Still, the production also wants to be a silly comedy, and in this respect it just isn’t as strong. This is not to say that the show is devoid of laughs, but its reliance on cultural references and (in the case of two characters) the utterance of words ending in “-ion” can grow old quickly. There is humor and conflict to be had in the interactions between the outsized personalities on stage; it’s just that Ghosn’s direction also tends to drag out these moments until the rhythm of the scenes is thrown off and the jokes don’t land as well as they should.

Physical boundaries

Something else that limits Tententenen‘s potential is the sense that it’s been directed with a larger stage in mind, even if smaller theaters can still offer unique strengths of their own. The set is a narrow platform with minimal props that do generally get the job done in communicating changes in setting—but blocking remains cramped and two-dimensional, and the intimacy of the venue is never fully utilized in the creation of images on stage. And though there’s no shortage of color and personality to the production design, it stops short of creating a distinctly absurd world to mirror our own.

Where the play proves particularly inspired is in its use of a large screen at the center of the stage, used to show responses from other people on “TukTok,” real-life celebrity cameos, documentary-style news reports, and pre-nuptial wedding videos. These projections are all surprisingly well-produced and meticulously patterned after the media they’re parodying. During a couple of moments, Bubu Beauty CEO Miss Bu (played by Janine Lloce) tosses and turns in front of a hallucinated collage of Filipino memes—an equally amusing and surreal image that allows the show to convincingly expand beyond the physical boundaries of its set.

Glimmers of complexity

The cast does a capable job within Tententenen‘s limits, although the performances don’t consistently intensify alongside the events of the story. It’s not that the actors should completely abandon lightheartedness for darkness, but there are times throughout when betrayals don’t sting as much as probably intended. By the end, the tragedy of what the characters have compromised in themselves just to get a taste of ultimately temporary success isn’t entirely felt. And as comedians, the cast is also held back by the script’s inconsistent humor; they can only be as funny as the jokes let them be.

With that said, the actors are at least able to commit to the broad strokes of who their characters are. Every time that somebody gets a brief chance to explain their past and who they were before arriving at the company, their performance becomes earnest and easy to sympathize with. Out of everyone in the ensemble, Rem delos Reyes (alternating with Kcedrick Balagat) is perhaps the easiest to root for, as his Tom Rodrigo—a former underwear live seller now thrust into various schemes against his wishes—remains naive and quietly reluctant. All of these actors have glimmers of greater complexity to them. It’s just that the production isn’t able to draw out these sparks.

This reviewer watched the 7 PM, October 17 performance.

 

Tickets: P999
Show Dates: October 10–25, 2026
Venue: Teatro Marco, Maginhawa, Quezon City
Running Time: approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes (without intermission)
Company: Teatro Marco
Creatives: Mark Ghosn (Playwright, Direction), Miguel Vyncent (Assistant Direction), Roneisha Ambion (Lighting), Julianna Santos (Followspot), Liane Ericka dela Cruz (Sound), Jerome Louis Agustino (Set and Props Crew), Patrick Enriquez (Set and Props Crew), Shannon Morrigan Catada (Set and Props Crew), Mich Monteron (Technical Direction), John Michael Monteron (Technical Operations), Liane Ericka dela Cruz (Technical Operations), Francis Rome delos Santos (Multimedia), Andrea de los Rios (Multimedia)
Cast: Janine Lloce, Kcedrick Balagat, Rem delos Reyes, Lucky Charles, Yan-yan Gervero, Rai dela Cruz, Joni Gee, JP Ortiz, Jin Mikado, Deane Tria, Hannah Salvan, Sonson O., Abby Reynes