REVIEW: ‘Lamay in Malaya’ is a powerful, full-bodied exploration of how we process grief

REVIEW: ‘Lamay in Malaya’ is a powerful, full-bodied exploration of how we process grief

“KOLABorador Co.’s immersive production offers a unique, personalized experience that has the audience move around the theater space, building to a surprisingly cathartic release.”

 

Leave it to fringe productions to remind us that the communal experience of live theater need not be restricted to sitting in silence in front of a performer. Staged in and around the lot of a former Coconut House in Diliman, Quezon City, KOLABorador Co.’s promenade-style Lamay in Malaya—which has returned after a limited, one-weekend run last year—has the audience interact with the actors and move between various areas, reflecting on all the different kinds of grief in our lives. The result is a show that guarantees a personalized experience for each viewer and facilitates an earnest exercise in empathy, all while consciously sharing the space with other people.

While Lamay obviously doesn’t proceed like a traditional play, its utilization of the elements of theater are just as purposeful as in any other great production. There’s much to admire in how tightly its design, writing, and performances come together to encourage an openness to its unconventional, devised concept—framed as a journey through different processes, social customs, and literary symbols of mourning, “hosted” by a funeral coordinator (played by Chic San Agustin-de Guzman). Simply put, this is an extraordinary show and an early high point for Philippine theater in 2026.

Echoes of Grief

The performance begins in an open-air lobby of sorts, facing an ice cream freezer made to look like a casket, humorously adorned with red curtains, flowers, and candles. After several opening scenes here, the audience is sorted into smaller groups according to the kind of ticket they received and subsequently guided to different areas around the lot, each staging its own respective mini-play within the play. After each mini-performance, the audience is guided back to the center and the process repeats twice more until the final scenes are carried out in the common area.

No matter which areas one gets to enter, it’s striking how scenographer Mark Daniel Dalacat has embraced the space already provided by this hollowed-out Coconut House. Beyond minimal costume work and eerie masks that bookend the play, Lamay’s design is fully DIY. Its production design—made up of found objects and the rooms and facilities that already exist here—almost makes the lot feel haunted by the stories of grief living within these walls. Third Salamat’s unique lighting for each room (together with natural light and shadow) then becomes key to the sensation that one is travelling across time and memory.

But perhaps most important to Lamay’s design is its location along a narrow street in Barangay Malaya, with little to no soundproofing (designed by Zsaris) between performance areas. This production is meant to be fully embedded in the community that surrounds it, with outside noise and the sound of other performances occurring at the same time all bleeding into one another. It can be both deliberately distracting and immensely comforting to hear the echoes of other narratives of grief playing out around you.

A Personal Journey

The first mini-performance that this reviewer got to see was a capsule adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot done in Filipino—starring Wenah Nagales and Joshua Tayco, set in the parking area, and dealing with grief over the loss of a brother. For the second performance, we were brought outside the venue and into an L300, which drove around the block as the spirit of an artist (Kathlyn Castillo) lamented her unfulfilled dreams. The third was staged in a narrow kitchenette, with a widow being visited by her friend (Tara Cabaero and Anna Deroca Pastor, respectively), one year after the death of her husband.

The first and third performances are kept straightforward, with some naturalistic touches—Nagales and Tayco pick up gravel and throw it against the opposite wall, while Cabaero drops a raw egg on the floor. Both feel more like extensions of the ideas about grief established in the opening scenes rather than complete stories in themselves, although being in such close proximity to the actors does highlight all the quiet, nuanced work they’re putting in. It’s the second performance, in the L300, that really becomes a full journey. Here, Castillo is at turns frightening, funny, and painfully vulnerable as she scrambles up and down the aisle, telling her story to the captive passengers.

 However, the scenes in the common area are really what make up the heart of the show. This is where the ensemble can be at their warmest and most inviting, be it through casual audience interactions, a group ritual expressing the Filipino custom of pagpag, or a much-needed comedic exhale in Tayco’s song about a flying cockroach. It’s here where Lamay’s concept as a guided communal experience is best realized, as the performances become less about transformation and more about accommodating whatever emotional response the audience is having.

Theater as Catharsis

If the three smaller performances don’t always provide specific insights or distinct characters so much as they simply orbit the play’s general themes, the cumulative effect of taking in everything the production offers is still surprisingly cathartic. It seems that the idea behind every audience member getting a personalized experience—seeing things that others don’t get to see—is to bring that unique experience back to the center, and feel a solidarity with everyone in the group by the end. You can’t truly know what questions about grief the others have been confronted with, or what they are carrying with them. But everyone is still received the same way by the actors and invited to participate in the same rituals.

Just as much as Lamay is an exploration of grief and all its articulations in our culture and history, it also ends up validating theater as the ultimate form of catharsis. After everyone has spent the duration of the play moving around the lot, occupying the physical spaces where these narratives play out and in a way embodying these characters, the final act the audience participates in is the pagpag, performed through a simple dance. Here, the weight of all these feelings is effectively shaken off with a smile, even if only for this night, and met with the knowledge that one need not be alone in their grieving. 

This reviewer watched the 7 PM, February 13 show.

 

Tickets: P800 – P1000
Show Dates: Feb 6–22 2026
Venue: Coconut House, 34 Malaya Street, Barangay Malaya, Diliman, Quezon City
Running Time: approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes (without intermission)
Company: KOLABorador Co.
Creatives: Mark Daniel Dalacat (Repetitur, Scenography, Styling), Third Salamat (Lighting Design), Zsaris (Sound Design), Vic Villareal (Dramaturgy), John Abul (Additional Styling)
Cast: Chic San Agustin-de Guzman, Joshua Tayco, Wenah Nagales, Kathlyn Castillo, Tara Cabaero, Anna Deroca Pastor, Raphne Catorce, Tess Jamias, Jona Paculan, Gino Ramirez, Nazer Salcedo, Marjorie Lorico, Rayna Vihuella Reyes, Bong Cabrera, Kyrie Samodio