Agot Isidro rang in her 60th birthday the way she’s lived much of her public life lately: unapologetically. Her two-night concert, “The Story of A.I.,” played out over the weekend at the Globe Auditorium of the Maybank Performing Arts Theater in BGC, with Rowell Santiago directing the show and Ejay Yatco serving as musical director.
The performance traced Isidro’s arc from the girl-next-door image she cultivated in the 1990s to the outspoken public figure she is today, opening on a soft note with a cover of Donna Lewis’s “I Love You Always Forever” before building into a set that mixed her own catalogue with songs by acts like the Cranberries, Alanis Morissette, Swing Out Sister and Olivia Dean.
Guest performers moved through the night in waves. Maris Racal and Belle Mariano joined her for R&B-leaning duets, while APO Hiking Society’s Jim Paredes and Buboy Garovillo — plus fellow ‘Sang Linggo nAPO Sila alumnae Melissa de Leon, Bing Loyzaga and Amy Perez — brought back the show that first launched her into the industry after talent manager Johnny Manahan discovered her while she was working as a backup singer on “The Sharon Cuneta Show.” Jericho Rosales and Piolo Pascual, both of whom have said on record that they once had crushes on her, also took the stage for duets.
The concert’s emotional turn came in its third act, when Isidro changed into a gold dress to speak more directly about her activism and the online criticism it has drawn. She performed “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman and later “Mad World,” addressing the backlash she’s faced for speaking out against injustice. Asked, via an onstage screen prompt, whether she wanted to block her critics, she answered bluntly: no.
But it was when she turned to her own material that the night felt most personal. Her renditions of “Beginning Today,” “Everyday” and “Sa Isip Ko” gave the crowd a purely nostalgic stretch of the show — songs from her own catalogue that reminded the audience she’d been a recording artist in her own right long before she became known for anything else, and that this comeback was, at its core, a return to that first identity.
She closed the night by describing her activism as something inseparable from who she is, saying she’s learned to withstand the criticism because she knows it isn’t rooted in truth.
