Who is the King of Pinoy Stand-up Comedy and why is it Alex Calleja?
A stand-up comedy show on a Friday night sounded like such a treat that I didn't think twice about accepting the invitation to watch even though I had never heard of the headliner before.
If, like me, you're unfamiliar with comedian Alex Calleja, here's a briefer: his TV special, Past Is Past, went straight to #1 in Netflix Philippines upon its debut in March. It wrested the top spot from the widely popular Japanese anime series One PIece and stayed there for the next two days. Who knocked it off the summit? Only the biggest boy band in the world, BTS, with its new concert special.
Past isn't the first local stand-up comedy show to dominate the chart. That honor belongs to last year’s Tamang Panahon, which stayed at the perch for nine consecutive days and in the top 10 for over a month. It's star: Alex Calleja.
I didn't know any of this going into the show, titled “A Night of Unfiltered Comedy,” last Friday. (I only Googled when I came home.) In short, I was a Calleja virgin. My companion was not; he had already streamed Past. But he wasn't exactly jumping up and down when he talked briefly about it on our way to Uptown Mall in BGC, the new show’s venue. I could tell he had managed his expectations. I took my cue from that.
I’m happy to report the show exceeded both our expectations. We were laughing and clapping throughout the show together with the sold-out crowd inside Uptown Cinema 2. In fact, many jokes triggered uproarious laughter from many. My friend even raved, midway through Calleja’s set, “Mas nakakatawa ‘to. Iba talaga pag live.”
Nothing really compares to the live viewing experience. Unlike watching from behind the filter of a screen, the connection is direct and more intimate, the sound is more sensory and enveloping, and the energy from the crowd is palpable. It’s communal, it’s visceral, it’s immediate. The jokes may still land onscreen but they may be best consumed in bits and pieces, like the 10-minute comedy monologues in award shows and excerpts of hour-long stand-up performances.
“Unfiltered Comedy” ran for over two and a half hours. It wasn’t all-Calleja, though. Four other comedians from a collective called The Comedy Crew took to the stage as opening act/s. Each had a ten-minute set and a different subject.
Israel Buenaobra was first to take the stage, which was really just two small inches-high platforms placed in front of the cinema screen. He came out twice—first to introduce himself as the emcee and to remind the audience of proper viewing etiquette and then for his act proper, for which he provided the voice over introducing himself while making his way back to the stage from the sidelines. He made a lot of self-deprecating jokes about the travails of plus-sized men. Some were wholesome, some weren’t but all were smart and delivered with a light, confident touch that didn’t belabor any point. His set was arguably the most brainy.
The second act may be least brainy but damned if it wasn’t funny. Introduced as a magician, comedian Anthony Andres literally had a bag of tricks with him. It contained some of the usual props—handkerchiefs, red balls, metal rings, a deck of playing cards—that the former Pilipinas Got Talent contestant used to serve the night’s only dose of physical comedy. His act turns “magic” on its head by skewering it with lots of sharp and unexpected wit, making things “appear” and “disappear” without involving even a trace of illusion or a hint of sleight-of-hand trickery. Throughout his set, I kept thinking, “Ang kulit!” That’s the kind of magic Andres’ comedy wields.
Half-Filipino, half-Ethiopian Dawit Tabonares opened his set by poking fun at his helmet-size afro hair and went on to talk about some of his experiences as a Cebu native recently transplanted in Manila (to pursue stand-up comedy because, as an online bio notes him saying, “Cebu has no stand-up, only videokes”). A chunk of his segment made light of public commuting in the city, particularly the MRT, to the delight of the train-riding members of the audience. If the overall crowd response wasn’t that giddy as with the previous sets, it wasn’t because Tabonares’ jokes weren’t good but because they may not be that relatable to the mostly upscale, car-owning Uptown crowd.
The final Front Act was another non-Manileño, Grease Junio. The banker from Pangasinan dug even deeper into his roots than Tabonares, starting his segment with a vocabulary lesson of Pangasinense words that sound obscene in Tagalog. He continued on this road and doubled down on the sex talk with a bunch of jokes about that adult-oriented streamer called Vivamax. Some of the more proper, closed-button types in the audience, specifically the ladies, probably felt their faces blushing faintly but it’s to Junio’s credit none of his pieces bordered on bastos at all. With a youthful vibe and geeky charm, he came off as delightfully playful.
Of course, the best was saved for last. Calleja is all of this four-man comedy crew combined and more. And that’s not just because he is a veteran in stand-up. Before he found success as a solo artist, he was sharpening his skills with his work in TV—first as a writer in It’s Showtime and then as a host in other shows in another network. But skills can bring stand-up comedians only so far. The best ones are those with a wealth of life experiences and the talent to find the fun and the funny in them and serve them with clear-eyed, on-point, and relatable observations and creative flights of comedic fancy. This is why the likes of Calleja and Vice Ganda are so good at what they do.
For “Unfiltered Comedy,” the 53-year-old mined a lot of laughs from his roles as the youngest of nine children and as husband. The big collection of jokes about his birth was especially golden, eliciting some of the wildest reactions from the audience for fantasy scenes of himself inside his mother’s womb (she had him at age 42). To think he went into all of this spontaneously, as an extension of his set which was apparently only supposed to last about an hour. Earlier, there were political jokes—including something along the lines of “Sa dami ng politikong ginagawang comedy ang Kongreso, ano kaya kung kaming mga komedyante ang punasok sa politika?”—but not nearly enough given all the shenanigans currently going on, bits on pop culture and travel, and other slices of Filipino life. There was also unscripted crowd work, specifically around a guest dressed head-to-foot as Micheal Jackson who was both a fan of the King of Pop and of Calleja, arguably the King of Pinoy Stand-Up.
It sure was a night well-spent at the cinema, literally, but with live entertainment for a change. The good news is it will return for several more nights as part of an exclusive residency at Megaworld Cinemas. Even better news is the upcoming shows will tour different branches.
Tickets to A Night of Unfiltered Comedy are available here for P1,600.