REVIEW: Theater Yearender 2025 — Highlights of the Philippine Stage
This past year saw one relatively new player in the Manila theater scene dominate with a stellar run of productions—while major companies and smaller producers alike had their best work in shows that emphasized community, risk-taking, and small-scale storytelling. Below are just some of the standout shows, performances, and artistic achievements in Philippine theater in 2025.
2025’s Top Shows
The best production of the year was Guelan Varela-Luarca’s 3 Upuan, jointly staged by Scene Change and Areté Ateneo. While the play originally had its limited debut run in 2024, this year allowed it to travel across different venues with two casts—magnifying its devastating, life-affirming power as it followed three adult siblings trying to make sense of grief and time. Directed by Varela-Luarca with precision, imagination, and a heart overflowing with love, it’s a true testament to just how much this art form is capable of doing and why telling stories through theater is so important for us.
Later on in the year, Areté then offered a totally different experience in a wholly contrasting style, but which inspired arguably the same feeling of euphoria: Nelsito Gomez and Basti Artadi’s Si Faust. Loud, ferociously performed, and featuring some of the best ensemble singing of the year, this retelling of the Goethe play (channeled entirely through the music of Filipino metal band Wolfgang) spoke in broader gestures and through more archetypal figures, and still managed to transform the theater into an exhilarating roller coaster ride. One tends to forget something like this is even possible on stage.
And if these weren’t enough to prove that Ateneo has only kept on growing as a vital hub for ambitious and diverse theatrical storytelling, the university’s various stages also hosted productions of Barefoot Theatre Collaborative’s sprawling and fully revamped law school musical Bar Boys, Areté’s haunting pre-war tragedy Quomodo Desolata Es?, and Teatro Meron and Roleplayers’ hilariously absurd comedy Sopranong Kalbo. The first two confronted national identity and personal responsibility through intelligent writing and expressive visual design, while the third imagined a complete breakdown of language and meaning through the trappings of civilized modern society.
And outside the Quezon City campus, three ensemble-driven shows made particularly strong impressions in their own distinctive ways: Tanghalang Pilipino’s chilling domestic horror story Kisapmata (at the CCP Complex), BoxStage Manila’s modest but enthralling cycle of relationship dramas Sala sa Pito (at Far Eastern University), and GMG Productions’ staging of the deceptively layered 9/11-era musical Come from Away (at Circuit Makati). Whether these shows were portraying sickening violence, yearning and loneliness, or pure selflessness, all of them expressed their ideas primarily through the bodies of their actors—the very foundation of live theater.
2025’s Top Performances
The two best individual performances of the year just happened to come from the same show, as the opposite ends of Si Faust’s moral spectrum. Maita Ponce’s Mephistopheles was a grinning, malevolent agent of chaos whose razor-edged voice sold the seductiveness of making a deal with the devil. Meanwhile, Shaira Opsimar reached astonishing vocal heights as Marga, with a shattering tenderness that stood as a lone flicker of light against all of the show’s darkness.
2025 saw no shortage of emotionally resonant performances by leading ladies in musicals. In PETA’s beautifully refined restaging of Walang Aray, Lance Reblando made the role of Julia all her own through inexhaustible charisma and the sheer magnetism of her presence on stage. While in The Sandbox Collective’s stripped-down Next to Normal, Shiela Valderrama easily met the demands of playing a role as gut-wrenching as Diana with a voice like a force of nature.
Three actors in particular also crafted striking portraits of denial. As Robert in Stages Production Specialists, Inc.’s Kaliwaan, Ron Capinding muted the pain of a betrayed husband into barely concealed disgust. In the titular role of Full House Theater Company’s Delia D., Phi Palmos expertly played the aspiring singer as capable but desperate to be greater beyond her capacity. And in Bar Boys, Alex Diaz mastered Chris’ fiery resolve while grappling with the corrupt influence of the character’s own father.
In prominent featured roles, Alfredo Reyes as Lord Farquaad in Full House’s Shrek the Musical and Benedix Ramos as Angelo in Scene Change’s Dagitab commanded the most attention—even among strong ensembles and unique visual environments. Reyes’ precise timing, high energy, and sheer commitment to demanding physical humor made him stand head and shoulders above the rest, while Ramos found romance, tragedy, and ultimately salvation within an enigmatic character heading straight for self-destruction.
Three featured actresses whose voices were key to the success of their respective productions were Maronne Cruz in Barefoot’s We Aren’t Kids Anymore, Kloren Flores as Matrona in Sala sa Pito, and Lhorvie Nuevo-Tadioan as Dely in Kisapmata. Cruz’s intricate melodies brought both an R&B flourish and a soulfulness to her musical, while Flores’ haughty laughter betrayed a bitter loneliness permeating through the whole ensemble, and Nuevo-Tadioan’s harsh whispers to the audience communicated an entire history of traumatic abuse.
In student-led university productions, three performers proved especially impressive. Chloe Abella’s Rosalinda in Tanghalang Ateneo’s Paano Man Ang Ibig made the language of both Shakespeare and Rolando Tinio sing with ease and exceeding charm. Kerr Allen’s Senyor in Dulaang UP’s May Katwiran ang Katwiran (from the twin bill Para Kay Tony) slid seamlessly between comedy and cruelty. And LJ Bala’s Elle Woods in Ateneo Blue Repertory’s Legally Blonde smartly avoided caricature to anchor the whole show in real dignity.
Finally, the year’s best ensembles went above and beyond simply having multiple great performances. Taken together, both casts of 3 Upuan (Martha Comia, Jojit Lorenzo, JC Santos, Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Paolo O’Hara, and Cris Pasturan) contributed to an impossibly lush portrait of their characters’ grieving. The ensemble of Quomodo Desolata Es? (led by Delphine Buencamino and Gab Pangilinan) transformed into a parade of ghosts haunting the ruins of the Philippines. And the cast of Sopranong Kalbo (Joel Macaventa, Miren Alvarez-Fabregas, Joseph dela Cruz, Pickles Leonidas, Gold Soon, and Yan Yuzon) managed to find consistent laughs among deliberate miscommunication and incongruity.
More Noteworthy 2025 Mentions
Similarly, the year’s best directors did more than just assemble the sum of their show’s parts. Mikko Angeles created an entirely new musical with this rerun of Bar Boys, embracing all the creative and technical opportunities afforded by a change in venue. Guelan Varela-Luarca’s work in Quomodo Desolata Es? reinterpreted Nick Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino into full-tilt historical tragedy, while Ron Capinding somehow made letting go of logic fun and consummately entertaining in Sopranong Kalbo.
Establishing the pulse of their respective shows, Si Faust’s musical director Kabaitan Bautista elevated the music of Wolfgang into a massive, gothic soundscape; and in The Mirror Theatre Studios’ Elecktra, drummer Dani Arceo single-handedly functioned as Greek chorus and internal monologue. Sound designer Aron Roca wrangled his theater’s difficult sound system to make every confession in We Aren’t Kids Anymore ring crystal clear, while Delphine Buencamino’s movement design for Come from Away made an urgent timeline of disaster fully legible.
Setting the tone of their productions through essential technical work, lighting designer D Cortezano turned Kisapmata’s Zapote house into a shadowy prison cell, while GA Fallarme and Joyce Anne Garcia’s video projections for Delia D. completed the publicly scrutinized world of showbiz through a barrage of screens. Wika Nadera’s reversed stage for Ateneo Entablado’s Paraisong Parisukat (from the twin bill Makibaka! Huwag…) had the audience face upwards into a sea of shoeboxes, and Mark Dalacat’s two-sided circus for Sandbox’s Side Show ensured active audience engagement.
Interestingly, where 2025 found consistently inventive spectacle was in fantasy costume design. Hershee Tantiado and Phillip Domingo embraced exaggerated silhouettes and psychedelic colors for Repertory Philippines’ Alice in Wonderland. Eric Pineda’s costume execution for Shrek successfully replicated the character transformations and optical illusions necessary for its comedy and drama. And Carlos Siongco gave superhero-esque personalities to the mythological beings in DUP’s Sa Gitna ng Digmaan ng mga Mahiwagang Nilalang Laban sa Sangkatauhan (from the twin bill Mga Anak ng Unos).
And from the beginning to the end of the year, Guelan Varela-Luarca’s script for 3 Upuan remained a north star—a singular piece of writing that found solace from the deepest kinds of grief behind dense, intellectual discussion and a free-flowing sense of time. It served as a reminder that well-written theater, no matter when you see a show, can still meet you where you’re at and be living proof that something beautiful can be created out of pain.
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