Repertory Philippines revives Shakespeare’s most-produced comedy for the first time in years, pairing faithful text with pop-song sight gags — and the run at St. Scholastica’s College closes this weekend.
Repertory Philippines’ “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” opened September 12 at Saint Cecilia’s Hall inside St. Scholastica’s College, Manila, and enters its final weekend, September 25 to 27. Jeremy Domingo, REP’s artistic director, directs the three-weekend run.
Repertory Philippines has built most of its history on the Broadway and West End catalogue, and REP President and CEO Mindy Perez-Rubio has said Shakespeare “has been such a significant part of REP’s 60-year history” even though the company revisits him directly only occasionally. Domingo’s production, part of REP’s 89th season, “By Love, Transformed,” picks “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — one of Shakespeare’s most frequently staged comedies — as an entry point for audiences less familiar with his other work.
The Play, Played Straight — Mostly
The production keeps Shakespeare’s text intact: four Athenian lovers tangle with a fairy-world feud between Oberon and Titania, while a troupe of amateur actors rehearses a play of their own in the same forest. Reviewers have flagged what the staging adds on top of that text as “small comic winks” — pop songs dropped in where the script calls for a traditional musical cue. Domingo has said the goal is to “celebrate the power of Shakespeare’s dialogues.”
The staging leans on a central staircase that the four lovers run up and down through most of their chaos, and costuming pushes the Athenian quartet toward a look reviewers described as young people who “wandered in from Poblacion or BGC” — current Manila nightlife districts standing in for ancient Athens. The choice doesn’t extend evenly across the production’s other worlds; at least one review noted the fairy realm and the Mechanicals’ scenes lean on projected visuals that blur together more than they should.
Who to Watch
Joey Cosio-Mercado plays Puck and Philostrate, and reviewers have singled him out as an “immediate scene-stealer.” Randy Villarama and Lesley Leveriza Lina (alternating with Giannina Ocampo-Van Hoven) play the quarreling Oberon and Titania, doubling as Theseus and Hippolyta; Sevee Eslabra and Luis Marcelo play Hermia and Lysander, with GK Diola as Demetrius and Dani Roque and Isabelle Prado alternating as Helena. Tristan Bite leads the Mechanicals as Bottom, alongside Alexa P. Sandiego, Rico del Rosario, Ysh Bautista, Robert Bradly Hao, and Bella Alejandro. Carlos Siongco, a 2026 Gawad Buhay Award winner, designed the costumes.
Where and When
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” plays its closing weekend, September 25 to 27, at Saint Cecilia’s Hall, St. Scholastica’s College, Manila. Tickets go through Ticket2Me and Ticketworld; REP can also be reached directly at 0966-905-4013 or 0962-691-8540, or by email at promotions@repphil.org or sales@repphil.org.
The production follows June’s “Man of La Mancha,” staged with the Manila Symphony Orchestra, and August’s “Cinderella, A Tale of the Glass Slipper” for young audiences, both part of the same season.