REVIEW: ‘A Chorus Line’ is a love letter to dance
Theatre Group Asia’s A Chorus Line understands something essential about the musical: that this is above all a show about dancers who simply want to dance. Directed and choreographed by Karla Puno Garcia, this staging is at its strongest when it trusts that truth and builds everything around it.
Dance evolution
Set almost entirely inside a rehearsal room, Miguel Urbino’s set design is anchored by movable mirror panels that subtly shift the space around the dancers. Cha See’s lighting design with Urbino’s set proves especially transformative. More than supplying spectacle, the lighting gives shape, rhythm, and emotional texture to the evening, enriching number after number without ever overwhelming them.
Farley Asuncion’s musical direction and Megumi Katayama’s sound design keep the production on steady footing, even if neither emerges as a standout expressive force in the way the set and lighting do. The score comes through clearly enough, though there is a vocal unevenness in the cast that is noticeable.
What makes this show so engaging in its first half is how clearly it treats the ensemble not as anonymous bodies but as individuals. Garcia’s work gives the sense that each dancer is carrying a story arc not only in their individual songs, scenes, or monologues, but in the way they dance as the story progresses. By the end of Act One, the production has already become a thoroughly enjoyable evening, full of theatrical vitality and buoyed by an ensemble that makes you feel invested in whether they will make the cut.
Heart of the show
Into the second act, the show reaches its peak in Cassie’s big dance number, “The Music and the Mirror,” performed by Lissa De Guzman. De Guzman is superb, and the number becomes a stunning convergence of performance, direction, and music. More than a showcase of technical skill, it becomes an argument for dance itself: as language, as calling, as art form. In that moment, A Chorus Line most powerfully communicates why dancing is not merely a stepping stone to something else, but the thing itself.
Lissa de Guzman as Cassie performs The Music and The Mirror; Photo Credit: Jyllan Bitalac
Elsewhere, Conrad Ricamora brings a softness to Zach. Mostly experienced as a voice, Ricamora makes Zach feel professional, probing, and compassionate. Moving around the theater and addressing the performers from different points in the space, his Zach comes across as a thoughtful observer trying to understand the people in front of him. That choice changes the temperature of the show. There is less tension in this show. Each individual’s sharing of their story doesn’t feel exposing or confessorial, but as though being shared in a safe space.
Ensemble in the spotlight
The ensemble gives the musical much of its life, even if not every featured turn lands equally well.
Mikaela Regis is particularly effective as Sheila, bringing a mature, self-aware quality to the role that lets her self-deprecation read as both armor and vulnerability. Brie Chappell is a riot as Val, fully leaning into the comic pleasures of “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three,” while Sam Libao makes Kristine similarly delightful, finding plenty of humor in the role especially in “Sing!”. Michaela Marfori also stands out as Bebe with one of the stronger voices in the cast.
Christina Glur, who carries “What I Did for Love” as Diana, is serviceable, though her performance never quite commands the stage the way the material asks it to. Universe Ramos as Paul, tasked with delivering act two’s pivotal monologue, gave a mannered delivery that didn’t stir emotionally despite the show giving his scene every possible advantage with a stripped-back stage, solitary spotlight, and a hushed room.
Christina Glur and the cast of A Chorus Line perform What I Did for Love; Photo Credit: Jyllan Bitalac
Getting (inter)personal
The production’s limitations largely become more exposed as the material grows more dramatically demanding. Once the focus shifts away from the work, the dancers, and the larger questions of vocation and identity that made the first half so vivid and leaned more heavily toward the personal history between Zach and Cassie, the evening’s stellar energy loses some of its shine.
What had been so compelling earlier was the way Garcia externalizes dancers’ inner lives through performance and theatrical form. By comparison, the Zach-Cassie confrontation feels more conventional and less fully developed, arriving as a personal drama the production has not invested enough in beforehand.
What a prize
Even so, Garcia’s production gets far more right than wrong, and right where it matters most. It understands that A Chorus Line lives or dies by whether it can honor dancers not as decorative bodies in motion, but as artists whose labor, longing, and selfhood are inseparable from the work they do.
For a musical centered on dancers seeking a place in the line rather than the spotlight, that quality becomes part of the production’s texture. This is a show that insists that joining the chorus is not a consolation prize. It is the prize.
This reviewer watched the 7:30 PM, March 11 show.
Tickets: Php 1914.50 – Php 5849.80
Show Dates: March 12 – 29, 2026
Venue: Samsung Performing Arts Theater, Circuit, Makati
Running Time: approx. 2 hours and 15 mins (w/ 15 min intermission)
Producer: Theatre Group Asia
Creatives: Karla Puno Garcia (director and choreographer), Miguel Urbino (set design), Cha See (lighting designer), Farley Asuncion (musical director), Megumi Katayama (sound design), Kat Ibasco (costume design), Jamie Wilson (associate director), JM Cabling (associate choreographer),
Cast: Conrad Ricamora, Lissa De Guzman, Christina Glur, Mikaela Regis, Brie Chappell, Sam Libao, Jordan Andrews, Universe Ramos, Jessica Carmona, Stephen Viñas, Julio Laforteza, Angelo Soriano, Luca Olbes, Ken San Jose, Michaela Marfori, Iya Villanueva, Richardson Yadao, Alyanna Wijangco, Rapah Manalo, Jim Ferrer, Rofe Villarino, Anna del Prado, Winchester Lopez, Lord Kristofer Logmao, Paulina Luzuriaga, Bomba Ding, Franco Ramos, Anyah de Guzman
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