YEMAYA Review: 9 Works Theatrical Trusts Us to Wade Into Its Waters
The best way to enter YEMAYA is not to demand a map. It is to allow yourself to believe, even for a while, that its world exists.
At its June 12 press preview, 9 Works Theatrical’s YEMAYA did not build every corner of that world for the audience. Instead, it invited us to become active participants in imagining it: the fictional province of Magdalena, the city beyond it, the waters leading toward an idealized America, and the uncertain possibilities waiting past the shore.
That trust is one of the production’s strengths.
YEMAYA taps into a part of the psyche that adulthood often teaches us to suppress. It puts us through the paces of childlike wonder, shock, hope, fantasy, and the unexpected. It allows the story to unravel without immediately explaining every bend in the journey. At times, it even risks leaving the audience slightly disoriented until a meaning dawns, a detail finds its place, or the narrative curves in a direction you did not anticipate.
It is the kind of straight play that asks you to meet it halfway.
- Production: YEMAYA by 9 Works Theatrical
- Material: Filipino staging of Yemaya’s Belly by Quiara Alegría Hudes
- Filipino translation: Eljay Castro Deldoc
- Direction and set design: Ed Lacson Jr.
- Review basis: June 12, 2026 press preview
- Press-preview cast featured: Tommy Alejandrino as Jesus/Mulo and Ness Roque as Maya
- Venue: The Black Box at The Proscenium Theater, Rockwell Makati
- Run: Weekends from June 13 to July 5, 2026
A World Created Through Imagination
YEMAYA is 9 Works Theatrical’s Filipino staging of Yemaya’s Belly, the debut play of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes. Translated into Filipino by Eljay Castro Deldoc and directed by Ed Lacson Jr., who also designed the set, the production follows a young boy’s journey across land and sea in search of something beyond the life he has always known.
The staging understands that a world rooted in fantasy does not always require literal excess.
There is restraint in the visual language of the production, but it is never static. Its excellent use of flown scenic elements allows the stage to transform with a sense of movement and possibility. The changes do not merely establish new locations. They feel like extensions of the story’s shifting emotional terrain.
There is also magic in the presentation. YEMAYA taps into magical realism without feeling compelled to underline every fantastical element. The production understands that the most affecting images do not always need to explain themselves immediately.
The sound design is particularly immersive. Depending on where you are seated, it can feel as though the world of YEMAYA is moving around you rather than simply unfolding in front of you. Magdalena, the city beyond it, and the waters leading toward Mulo’s idealized America are not merely locations. They become part of the story’s emotional geography.
The sound gives the production texture and scale while allowing its more intimate moments to retain their weight.
This is especially important for a story that is constantly negotiating between the real and the imagined.
A Filipino Translation That Finds Its Rhythm
Deldoc’s translation is almost lyrical, and that is very much a compliment.
The Filipino language is given depth without becoming alienating. The production does not drown the audience in words that feel needlessly inaccessible, nor does it flatten the material in an effort to make every idea immediately digestible. Instead, the language prepares you for the more musical passages of the play.
YEMAYA is not a musical, but it understands the musicality of language.
The dialogue moves with rhythm. The humor lands naturally. The transitions pull you forward. Even moments of confusion feel deliberate, as though the production is asking you to stay with the current long enough for a deeper meaning to emerge.
When that meaning arrives, it does so with significance.
An Ensemble Worth Following
The cast sustains that delicate balance between the grounded and the fantastical. Each actor is excellent in their role, with the level of performance remaining consistently strong even when some are asked to embody multiple characters.
During the press preview, Tommy Alejandrino played Jesus/Mulo. He is excellent in carrying the audience through the character’s developments. There is an openness to his performance that allows us to experience the play’s discoveries, uncertainties, and promises through his eyes. He does not force the transformation. He lets the audience gradually understand what each new encounter means to a boy who has started to imagine that the world may be larger than the one he inherited.
Ness Roque is equally compelling as Maya. From the moment she steps onstage, she is fully inside the character. Her performance reveals Maya in layers, allowing her confidence, complexity, and emotional weight to emerge without reducing her into a mere symbol of possibility.
Herbie Go as Tico and Anthony Falcon as Jelin bring spice and laughter in distinct ways. Their humor never feels interchangeable. Each character has his own rhythm, giving the world of YEMAYA a lived-in quality beyond the central journey.
Sheenly Gener is a standout supporting presence as Lila. Her comedic timing is spot-on, but what makes the performance linger is how increasingly endearing the character becomes. She earns that affection without demanding it.
And then there is Bituin Escalante as Yemaya and Inay.
Her incomparable voice is already a given. What makes her performance even more magnetic is the mystery she brings to the stage. Her acting pulls at the heartstrings the hardest, but it also keeps you watching closely. There is always a sense that something remains just beneath the surface. You want to know what she will do next, what she will reveal, and how much of the tide she is willing to let you see.
The Promised Land Beyond the Water
YEMAYA is wonderful material, but its emotional core may require deeper reflection to resonate as strongly with a Filipino audience today.
As a Filipino millennial, I no longer feel the idea of the American Dream with the same intensity that earlier generations may have experienced. America is no longer automatically the destination that explains every sacrifice. The promise has faded. The mythology has become more complicated.
But the story becomes more affecting when America is understood more broadly: as an impossible goal, a promised land, or even an imagined panacea.
It is the place we convince ourselves exists when desperation makes us want to leave everything behind. It is the dream of freedom when home begins to feel too small, too difficult, or too limiting. It does not have to be a literal country. It can be any distant shore onto which we project the life we think we deserve.
Maybe, for a while, our generation romanticized Baguio in a similar way. Not as YEMAYA’s America in the most literal sense, but as a softer and more attainable version of escape. A city far enough from Manila to feel like another life. A place where the air is cooler, the pace is gentler, and the fantasy of leaving everything behind feels briefly possible.
We do this with places. We imagine that crossing a distance, whether by road or by sea, might also allow us to become someone freer.
That is where YEMAYA becomes deeply Filipino.
The production is not simply about wanting to go somewhere else. It is about the stories we tell ourselves when we need to believe that somewhere else will save us. It is about hope, but also the cost of allowing hope to take the shape of escape.
Final Thoughts
YEMAYA is excellently produced and executed. It is visually deliberate, sonically immersive, thoughtfully translated, and anchored by an ensemble that understands the material’s strange and shifting waters.
What the production may still need is a little more charm in its invitation.
Its restraint is admirable, and there is genuine magic in the way its world is presented. There are moments, however, when it could pull the audience more deeply into its waters before asking us to surrender to the current.
Perhaps it needs a little more warmth, or even a more literal sense of immersion into what these places mean to the characters who move through them: the texture of Magdalena, the promise of the city beyond it, the pull of the waters toward Mulo’s idealized America, and the reasons one place can feel like home while another becomes the imagined answer to everything.
Telling us a little more about that world may allow the production’s larger turns to land with even greater force.
Still, YEMAYA trusts its audience. It does not spoon-feed every meaning. It asks us to imagine its world, to wade into its mysteries, and to examine the promised lands we create when reality no longer feels enough.
Once its tide catches you, it gives you much to carry back to shore.
YEMAYA runs on weekends from June 13 to July 5, 2026 at The Black Box at The Proscenium Theater in Rockwell Makati. Performances are scheduled at 8:00 PM on Fridays and at 3:00 PM and 7:30 PM on Saturdays and Sundays.
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Official hashtag: #Yemaya9wtMNL