PDI Review: 'M. Butterfly' by Jhett Tolentino/ FrontRow Entertainment

Yep, this was bad. The website version of my review here.

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This 'Butterfly' fails to seduce

When David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly" premiered on Broadway in 1988, The New York Times declared it "a visionary work" and "a sweeping, universal meditation on two of the most heated conflicts--men versus women, East versus West--of this or any other time."

Hwang's play dramatizes the real-life account of a French diplomat who carried on a 20-year affair with a Beijing Opera singer--a story so ridiculous it may as well be the stuff of present-day news. The singer turned out to be a Communist spy and, even more absurd, the diplomat never knew his lover was a man in drag until it was too late.

The play doesn't dwell on sleazy facts. Told predominantly from the perspective of the diplomat, here named Rene Gallimard, it is an exhumation and eventual subversion of one (White) man's psychology, the play flipping over its cards during the final act as it hands over the reins to the singer Song Liling.

Big problems

That "M. Butterfly" hasn't aged well is really for the best. Current sensibilities in this rapidly evolving society now render antiquated many of the play's arguments concerning gender and even the East-West dichotomy.

But in FrontRow Entertainment and Tony Award-winning producer Jhett Tolentino's staging of this play, the script's outdated qualities are hardly the biggest problems.

Simply put, the production directed by Kanakan Balintagos gravely bungles the poetry of Hwang's writing. This literal-mindedness consequently dilutes the power of the piece, especially in the final act.

Comedy

There is comedy here, sure, but only in superficial doses--mainly in the seduction scenes between Gallimard and Song, and occasionally in the placeless accents zooming back and forth the stage like bullets.

But a daft sense of tragedy is nowhere to be found, which is the real tragedy here. Without a firm grasp of what makes this play really powerful--the gradual fall of both White man and White nation to the "inferior," feminine Orient in a most farcical manner--what transpires onstage is reduced to mere play-acting in heavy makeup.

Paper-thin

Is it too much to pine for a more perceptively performed production, one that could do justice to Hwang's passages? Balintagos' production is populated by a paper-thin ensemble and--chief among its troubles--two lead performances that don't jibe at all.

Olivier Borten's inept portrayal of Gallimard renders the character an idiot from the beginning, so that there's no sliver of excitement, no deeper thrill at all, at watching him fall for Song's spell. It's a fool being duped from the get-go.

One may wonder, then, why RS Francisco's Song even bothers to amp up the stilted, submissive-girl theatrics for this Westerner, but only if one can get past the distracting self-consciousness that plagues Francisco's portrayal (to say nothing of his even less convincing version of the spy out of drag). This production, after all, is partly advertised as Francisco's return to the role after first doing it for Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas almost three decades ago.

Has anything changed? Alas, this writer is in no position to answer that. But this much is certain: While the onstage seduction of Gallimard by Song does occur, the more important seduction--of the audience by this play--is inexistent.

It's admirable how skillfully this "M. Butterfly" has been marketed. It sold out more than half the performances of its three-week run before it even opened, with 100 percent of the proceeds, as stated in the program, going to beneficiaries such as Philippine High School for the Arts and Love Yourself, Inc.

But a sold-out crowd deserves a better, more thoughtful and scrupulously mounted show.

PDI Feature: Red Turnip Theater and 'A Doll's House, Part 2'

I wrote my first advancer feature, on the return of my favorite theater company in Manila (bias!), for the Inquirer--the website version here. "A Doll's House, Part 2" runs Sept. 15-Oct. 7.

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Red Turnip is back with 'A Doll's House, Part 2'

Topper Fabregas and the cast of "Tribes" (2016).

They were on a roll. Then they vanished. Now they're back.

That's the life--so far--of Red Turnip Theater, the quintet of Rem Zamora, Cris Villonco, Jenny Jamora, Ana Abad-Santos and Topper Fabregas. At their peak, they were churning out one critically acclaimed production after another, snagging the Best Play citation for full-length non-Filipino material in Inquirer-Theater's yearend roundup for three consecutive years (for Mike Bartlett's "Cock," Moisés Kaufman's "33 Variations" and Nina Raine's "Tribes").

Pulling back

So eyebrows were raised when, after staging Jennifer Hailey's "The Nether" in March 2017, the group fell off the radar.

"We had an inkling that we were going in a direction we wanted to pull back from," says Zamora, "so we unanimously decided to hit the refresh button. [The five of us] are literally behind everything, from planning the season to counting ticket stubs. It's been a juggling act since day one."

Now, Red Turnip returns with its 10th production--"A Doll's House, Part 2," Lucas Hnath's unauthorized sequel to the 19th-century Henrik Ibsen classic about the disintegration of an unhappy marriage.

Ibsen concludes with Nora, the protagonist, leaving her husband and kids--quite the controversial ending back in the day, when feminism and women's rights were still alien notions. Hnath picks up 15 years after Ibsen, with Nora, now a celebrated author, coming home.

"Part 2" opened on Broadway last year and was Tony-nominated for Best Play. But while it seems like typical material by Turnip standards--their avowed mission, after all, has been to mount "edgy," "in-your-face" nonmusical work--it's also a sequel to a story that hasn't been staged (at least professionally) in Manila since the new millennium. 

"You really don't need to know anything [about the original] to walk into this show," Villonco says. "When I saw it in New York, I was completely floored. Everything is already given in the exposition. I love that it is only 90 minutes and set in modern language."

Directorial debut

The play marks Villonco's directorial debut--the last of the Turnips to helm a production of their own. And, in a reversal of artistic roles, she's directing her uncle, renowned filmmaker Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, in his acting debut as Nora's husband Torvald.

"Torvald was the most difficult to cast," Villonco says. "At a family reunion, I saw [my uncle] and thought, 'What if?' I'm so used to him directing me, but on the first day of rehearsals, he gave something completely different that I liked but shook me a bit."

The role of Nora, which won Laurie Metcalf last year's Tony for Best Actress, will be played by Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, in her Red Turnip debut and her second consecutive lead role in a straight play (after Repertory Philippines' "Agnes of God" last year).

"It's a role I can really sink my teeth into," says Lauchengco-Yulo, popularly regarded as Philippine musical theater's First Lady. "Nora is a character way ahead of her time--a strong, highly intelligent and very determined woman."

The show, which also features Sheila Francisco and Rachel Coates, will open in a new venue for Red Turnip--the Zobel de Ayala Recital Hall at Maybank Performing Arts Theater in Bonifacio Global City.

"Part of our 'stepping back' was scaling down the sizes of our audiences per show and going for more intimate stagings," Zamora says. "The recital hall is perfect for this."

"We knew coming in that [exclusively staging straight plays] was going to be an uphill climb," he adds. "We figured, 'if we build it, they will come.' And the audience did. The challenge is keeping them coming."

PDI Review: 'Gee-gee at Waterina, Ang Musikal' by Artist Playground

A post-run review in today's paper--the website version here.

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'Gee-gee at Waterina, Ang Musikal': Flamboyance with a dark streak

In the 2000 Metro Manila Film Festival, Dolphy headlined "Markova: Comfort Gay," based on the life of Walterina Markova, one of many gay men forced into sexual slavery in World War II.

Playwright J. Dennis Teodosio imagined a sort of behind-the-scenes account of that movie for the first Virgin Labfest back in 2005, setting his tale in that snapshot of time when Walterina finally received the payment for film rights to his life story.

Working with Artist Playground, Teodosio expanded his straight play into the recently concluded musical, "Gee-gee at Waterina," which played only five performances (including a press preview) at Arts Above, Quezon City.

Distended affair

Perhaps such a brief life was all for the best. Despite its roughly 90-minute running time, the production directed by Andrew de Real was a distended affair, managing to feel both too long and too spare, with one too many musical numbers that only sent the story spinning in circles.

At its best, "Gee-gee at Waterina, Ang Musikal" was a marvelous romp. The idea was flamboyance with a dark streak, like vaudevillian cabaret, or as the creators put it during the post-preview talkback, an intimate musical by way of Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart (from Kander and Ebb's "Chicago").

The venue, which resembled a rundown music hall, was centered on a stage outfitted to look like a drab dressing room, with robes, sequined gowns and myriad other costumes adorning the walls.

And whenever Norman Peñaflorida took to the spotlight as Waterina's politician friend Gee-gee (also based on a real person), the musical soared to life. Peñaflorida was game-show emcee, crass but sympathetic friend, and self-aware fourth-wall breaker all at once. The highlight of the show was one of his numbers, which was woven as a hysterical litany of Waterina's past lovers.

Lengthy journey

Alas, the musical tripped on its stilettos whenever it turned somber, the epitome of this somberness being Roeder Camañag's Waterina.

Camañag's take on the role just felt too studied, the character, as written, at times bordering on caricature. And though it might have been done with the best intentions, the way the more "serious" moments in Waterina's story were handled made it difficult to take such scenes seriously.

In fact, the one serious moment that actually felt genuine belonged to Gee-gee (thanks, again, to Peñaflorida's unlabored performance).

It's this thematic incoherence that plagued the songs (Teodosio's lyrics set to Jesse Lucas' music), and even entire scenes. On one hand, there were laugh-out-loud sequences, and on the other, tearful drama, but where the two would (and should) meet--in effect, producing a conscientiously built musical--it was hard to pinpoint.

In his program notes, Teodosio shared the lengthy journey of his original one-act play to the stage, as it morphed along the way into such forms as a 10-minute piece for The Writers' Bloc and a workshop piece at the Iligan National Writers Workshop. It follows, then, that perhaps what this musical needs is similar extensive incubation, hopefully into something tighter and less tonally dissonant.