REVIEW: ‘Muli’ has a lot–too much–going on

REVIEW: ‘Muli’ has a lot–too much–going on

If you’re watching Muli, you better love Kakki Teodoro because there is a whole lot of her in this show. Not just because she plays Anita, the 42-year-old woman at the center of this new musical, but because if you’ve seen Teodoro in comedic roles, or roles that encourage her particular brand of extroversion and personality, there is plenty of that here.

She is, at this point, a master entertainer. During the press preview, where transitions were clunky, the sound system was patchy, and even hair pieces were flying about, Teodoro kept hold of scenes through sheer showmanship and likeability. The cast around her were just as game and high energy, and director Andrei Nikolai Pamintuan gives audiences a show that rarely sits still long enough for their energy to dissipate.

Elaborate lives

Written by Charissa Pammit and Jose Paolo dela Cruz, Muli starts with an intriguing conceit: Anita, who became a mother as a teenager in the early 2000s, starts imagining other lives she might have lived. In one, she’s a global p-pop superstar; in another, a billionaire contractor. These are outsized fantasies that allow Pamintuan to stage equally outsized sequences, and the show has great fun transforming Anita from one version of herself into another.

Through the riot of the first act, it’s almost easy to set aside that these fantasies seem to be haphazard in their selection. They’re fantasies after all, and they can be as ridiculous as Muli wants them to be. 

We know Anita used to sing, she tried joining singing competitions, and became a young mother. You understand why the show turns Teodoro into a pop star because of this singing interest, but she is also imagined to be a corrupt contractor seemingly to let the show make a topical joke. 

This may have made for a thoroughly entertaining first act, given the show one of its many memorable high-octane numbers, and led to the first act closer that’s so fun, it needs to be seen and experienced, but it doesn’t alter how the choice was rather random.

Much to say

This extends to the many ideas Pammit and dela Cruz introduce in Muli with the many things it tries to say and show about “what if’s” and millennial nostalgia though not enough about what was presented to be the central relationship of the show: the one Anita has with her daughter, Kath (Janine Teñoso).

Pammit and dela Cruz, instead of digging deeper into the ideas already in play such as grief, the opportunity cost of the choices we make, or even the particular nostalgia of being a millennial looking back at their childhood, they keep introducing new ones. 

Muli expands rather than deepens without giving any of the many interesting things they’ve introduced enough time to develop.

Nica del Rosario and Matthew Chang, both composers and musical directors here, have written songs for Muli that independently seem primed to be the next radio hit: there’s a rap, a p-pop/k-pop inspired bop, a Jolina-in-the-90s medley, a hilarious and angry political anthem that will give Rosas a run for its money, and gorgeous folksy OPM ballads among them, too. 

It isn’t an especially cohesive score, but instead, the songs respond to what the storytelling demands from moment to moment. As the storytelling goes all over the place, so the score goes with it. 

Pamintuan’s direction is no different. He doesn’t just give each idea its due, he enables its excesses. While a lot of the production numbers are a lot of fun and there’s plenty of camp and command of comedy in Muli, there’s little mitigating the weaknesses present in the book.

His instinct, like the music, is to follow the material wherever it goes: whether that’s another joke, production number, or later on, a major tonal shift. 

Key change

At more than two and a half hours including intermission, the evening begins to feel its length in the second act, especially as important pieces of what the musical eventually reveals itself to be arrive very late.

There is a turn you can see coming from some distance, though still played as an attempt at a shock-factor twist. 

Teodoro, to her credit, gives this moment the agony it deserves. But Pamintuan at one point just lets her hang there, crying her eyes out for so long and with so little assistance from the staging that the moment starts teetering dangerously toward melodrama. 

With a major plot point coming in late, and with the mother-daughter relationships only happening in transitions between production numbers, the whole arc comes off as mere plot device to shift the emotional weather on stage and give us a more grounded ending.

Plenty to enjoy

Teodoro remains enormously watchable, while Baus Rufo as Mito gives a solid supporting performance alongside Justine Peña as Juls and Marynor Madamesila as Detski, the trio of Anita’s closest friends. There is an ease to their comedy that suits a show this dependent on personality. Singer-songwriter Janine Teñoso, making her theater debut as Kath, does well with a role that doesn’t give her much detail to play beyond her place in Anita’s story.

More broadly, many of the characters are written with so little specificity that they can seem to have inherited some of the personalities of the actors playing them. 

The technical problems during the press preview—the patchy sound chief among them—are one thing. The more fundamental issue is a musical with plenty it wants to talk about and even more it wants to do, but whose many concerns rarely cohere.

That is what makes Muli both enjoyable and frustrating. Teodoro can hold a stage with inexhaustible confidence. Pamintuan knows how to serve a big theatrical moment and production number. Del Rosario and Chang have written songs you want to hear again, and the cast commits wholeheartedly to the funny, angry, and eventually painful places the musical sends them.

There are many good things in Muli. The trouble is they remain better at being good things on their own than parts in service of a solid book.

 

This reviewer watched the 8 PM, Sep 10 press preview.

 

Tickets: P1,854-3,914
Show Dates: September 11-27, 2026
Venue: Globe Auditorium, Maybank Performing Arts Theater, BGC Arts Center, Taguig City
Running Time: approx. 2 hours and 40 mins (w/15 min intermission)
Producer: Flip Music, Charissa Pammit
Creatives: Charissa Pammit (writer), Jose Paolo dela Cruz (writer), Nica del Rosario (Composer, Musical Director), Matthew Chang (Composer, Musical Director), Andrei Nikolai Pamintuan (Director), Gabbi Campomanes (Assistant Director), Julian Abuda (Choreographer), D Cortezano (Lighting Designer, Set Designer), Z Almeda (Assistant Set Designer), Rafa Sumilong (Associate Lighting Designer), Santi Obcena (Costume Designer), Jodinand Aguillon (Wardrobe Stylist), Harly Daria (Hair & Makeup Designer), Sarah Facuri (Video Designer), Arvy Dimaculangan (Sound Designer), Julian Hernandez (Sound Engineer), Jumbo de Belen (Music Producer)
Cast: Kakki Teodoro (Anita), Janine Teñoso (Kath), Vien King (Ian), Marvin Ong (Maki), Justine Peña (Juls), Marynor Madamesila (Detski), Baus Rufo (Mito), Raflesia Bravo, Harly Daria, Jon Abella, Gabo Tiongson, Kyla Rivera, Elian Dominguez, Miah Canton (ensemble / Kath understudy), Matel Patayon (ensemble / Anita understudy), Felicity Kyle Napuli