A forecast nor’easter pushed Beks Battalion’s New York show back a day, but rain did not keep Filipino fans from nearly filling the Queensborough Community College Theatre on Sunday night.
Chad Kinis, MC Muah and Lassy Marquez gave them the kind of break they had come for: a comedy concert in which the performers were often the targets of their own jokes.
The trio called the show “The Laff Control Project,” a pun on the flood-control projects at the center of a corruption scandal in the Philippines.
It was a pointed title for a rain-soaked weekend, though the show’s strength was less in political commentary than in the quick exchanges among three comedians who know how to make each other (and themselves) the punchline. The flood-control allegations have prompted investigations and criminal charges in the Philippines.
Originally scheduled for Sept. 26, the Bayside performance moved to Sunday because of the weather forecast. The audience’s turnout gave the visiting comedians plenty to play to. Their opening recast apl.de.ap’s “Bebot” as a comic number, establishing a mix of music, movement and teasing that carried into the rest of the show.
Kinis, Muah and Marquez also brought their backup dancers into the act, giving Chin Gomez, Cassey Fierce and Joao room to join the comedy rather than leaving them in the background. That looseness helped the performance feel less like a sequence of prepared punchlines and more like a running conversation onstage.
Self-deprecation was central to the trio’s approach. They made fun of their own looks and personas, then passed the joke to another member, building laughs through timing and familiarity rather than asking the audience to laugh at a stranger. Their willingness to be the butt of the joke made the banter easy to follow even when it moved quickly.
That interplay is familiar to viewers who discovered Beks Battalion through its videos. The group built a large YouTube following during the pandemic, but its members came from live comedy.
In an earlier interview, Kinis described the difference: Onstage, the audience’s laughter tells them immediately whether a joke works, and the three can adjust to one another in real time.
The Queens show made room for performers beyond the headliners.
Local stand-up performer Fierce, singer Jasper Lacson and veteran entertainer Gomez appeared before the trio. Lacson sang “Ginang,” his 2026 single. Clyde Martin Garcia joined as a special guest; he is a singer and content creator who formerly performed with the P-pop group ECLYPSE, later known as AON.
The New York engagement was locally produced by Lovely Sons and formed part of a U.S. tour led by director Marvin Caldito II. Earlier tour stops included LA, San Diego, San Francisco, and Chicago, with further performances scheduled in Honolulu (Oct. 2), and Guam (Oct. 24).
By the time the trio took their bows, the weather that had delayed the concert had become part of its setting, not its subject. For a nearly full theater in Bayside, the more immediate pleasure was hearing jokes land in a room full of people — something no comedy video can quite reproduce.
