'YEMAYA' Review: Visual splendor outshines the story
Beautifully staged and superbly acted, 'YEMAYA' impresses with its visuals but falls short emotionally.
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Beautifully staged and superbly acted, 'YEMAYA' impresses with its visuals but falls short emotionally.
The stage resembles a vast sandbox, a place suspended between memory and myth.
Dan Esguerra
Dreamy and visually exquisite, 9 Works Theatrical's YEMAYA is not for audiences who want mainstream entertainment, nor is it for those who prefer deeply intellectual theater. Instead, this straight play falls somewhere in between.
Some productions win audiences over with their story. Others win them over with the world they create. YEMAYA clearly belongs to the second group.
Adapted from Quiara Alegría Hudes' Yemaya's Belly and translated into Filipino by Eljay Castro Deldoc, the play is a feast for the senses. The Black Box theater at the Proscenium Theater Rockwell is transformed into an ever-shifting dreamscape through exquisite lighting, immersive sound design, fluid movement, and an elegant minimalist set.
The stage resembles a vast sandbox, a place suspended between memory and myth. Four wooden posts frame the playing space, while chairs, props, and scenic pieces descend visibly from ropes above the stage like fragments of dreams lowered into consciousness. Nothing attempts to disguise the mechanics of theater. Instead, the mechanics become part of the poetry.
Director Ed Lacson Jr. fully commits to the play's dreamlike style. JM Cabling gives the actors graceful, almost ceremonial movement, while the lighting and sound blur the line between fantasy and reality. Together, these elements keep the audience engaged even when the story starts to lose steam.
Deldoc's Filipino translation also stands out for its musicality. The dialogue has a lyrical rhythm that often sounds like spoken poetry. It feels modern without sounding ordinary, and poetic without becoming difficult to understand.
Ice-cold Coca-Cola has never sounded so refreshing that I wanted a glass myself (I am currently struggling with Coke Zero addiction). When the main character, Jesus (Benedix Ramos), describes his first taste of "fridgider Coke," you completely understand the excitement.
Lacson also clearly understands the play's dreamlike world. Fantasy, memory, and ritual blend together naturally, and the result is consistently beautiful.
Unfortunately, the script never reaches the same level.
The first act moves at a painfully slow pace. Long scenes about everyday activities, from cracking coconuts to learning dominoes or listening to lengthy stories, aim for poetry but rarely build enough dramatic interest. Slow storytelling is not a problem by itself, but these scenes simply go on for too long.
The play also struggles to find its audience. It does not have the easy appeal of commercial theater, but it also stops short of the bold ideas found in many experimental or intellectual plays. As a result, it feels caught between two styles. Its themes of migration, poverty, and the American Dream stay broad instead of becoming deeply personal.
The biggest issue is Jesus' character. He’s obsessed with wealth, dreaming of America and talking about money in rice jars. But weirdly, he doesn't grasp the basics of a transaction. He wants to buy things without understanding that buying requires payment; he dreams of success but doesn't get the concept of exchange.
So, his innocence eventually stops feeling mythic and begins feeling dramatically arbitrary. The result is a protagonist who often feels less like an innocent child discovering the world than someone who has arrived from another planet.
These contradictions keep the audience at a distance instead of drawing them closer. His choices never become fully clear, which makes it difficult to care about his journey despite Ramos' committed performance. Instead of drawing us in, these contradictions just push us away. Ramos gives it his all, but his character's motives stay murky.
The play finally discovers stronger footing in its second act. Following a devastating personal loss, Jesus evolves into Mulo, and his emotional trajectory becomes clearer.
The narrative gains momentum as grief reshapes his understanding of the world. A stunning dream sequence amid a violent storm becomes the production's defining moment, allowing mythology, memory, migration, and personal transformation to merge into a single theatrical image. At last, the play stops explaining dreams and instead becomes one.
Ultimately, YEMAYA is reduced to "atmosphere." It is a production of extraordinary craftsmanship built around a story that never fully earns the emotional investment its visual language promises.
Yet thanks to Lacson's imaginative direction, Deldoc's lyrical translation, and a uniformly excellent ensemble comprising Ramos, the formidable Bituin Escalante in her various maternal roles, Sheena Belarmino, Sheenly Gener, Anthony Falcon, and Herbie Go, it is a quality technical accomplishment.
Is spell is undeniable, but, yeah, it is easier to admire than to love.
