PDI Review: 'The House of Bernarda Alba'/ 'Ang Tahanan ni Bernarda Alba' by Dulaang UP

In today's Inquirer, my review of a show that encapsulated the Filipino word "sayang"--the website version here. I really do have very fond memories of Repertory Philippine's "August: Osage County."

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'Bernarda Alba' in English and Filipino: Which one succeeds?

Curtain call at "Ang Tahanan ni Bernarda Alba."

Two new versions of Federico García Lorca's "La casa de Bernarda Alba" are running in repertory under Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas: an English translation, "The House of Bernarda Alba," by Daisy Lopez; and another in Filipino, "Ang Tahanan ni Bernarda Alba," by Alexander Cortez, who directs both versions.

Neither one realizes its full potential to be gripping family-under-fire drama. The model here is the telenovela--yet Cortez seems blithely unaware of that, choosing instead to tone down his productions in the many places where they would have benefited from a more theatrically amplified approach.

Barbed confrontations

"Bernarda Alba" traps a family of women in mourning under one roof, the only male presence a suitor who is never seen by the audience.

The play is structured as a series of barbed and sometimes high-octane confrontations--mother versus daughter, sister versus sister--yet Cortez rarely delivers the kind of dramatic tension achieved by, say, Repertory Philippines' "August: Osage County" in 2014.

The English version, in particular, is a painful exercise in half-hearted anachronism: There is a visible attempt to make the performances look and sound like creatures of the past, inhabitants of a crumbling world evoked by designer Gino Gonzales, but the effort is oftentimes constrained. These actors, as shepherded by Cortez, are still very much of the present time--and acting in varying tones and registers at that.

There is also the matter of the script itself: Why the vestiges of Spanish expressions--and even a considerably lengthy passage delivered by one character in the language--when the point here is translation? How does this elevate the new text from the perspectives of both the actors and viewers, exactly?

Between the two versions, the Filipino is the more successful one. At least the entire cast is uniformly comfortable with the language, and the telenovela aesthetic is more clear-cut.

But both versions still highlight the tricky thing with anachronism--it has to be deliberate, or the whole endeavor will look like silly pretend-play. The same goes with the balance between drama and comedy that both productions struggle with: The comedy should be done really, really well--hopefully leaving the audience in stitches--so that the drama can land really hard. Failing that, you get a show that occasionally hits its stride, but never sustains its momentum.

It's the actors who save the day in the end. The Filipino version features Gigi Escalante's towering turn as the tyrannical matriarch (giving life to the adage "less is more"), with Gel Basa and Sarina Sasaki providing captivating presence as two of the daughters. (Sasaki is a luminous find in our books. She stands out simply by sounding the most natural and comfortable with the Filipino translation.)

The English version, meanwhile, has Frances Makil-Ignacio in an expectedly forceful turn as Bernarda Alba, but the most indelible performance belongs to Stella Cañete-Mendoza, who never, ever sags into predictability and all but disappears into the archaic time and place of the play, as the housekeeper Poncia.

Which brings us to a final thought: What exactly is the purpose of having the same actors perform both languages for such a limited run? This applies mainly to the actresses portraying the daughters--most of them are allotted only six performances in each staging, which is less than ideal time to fully master the demands of the play.

We are aware, of course, that this is standard practice for the company, to have actors perform in both languages, as it had done in its myriad productions that were in more than one--but to what end? The only acceptable end being a performance that masters the character in both languages, of course. 

PDI Review: 'Passion' by Philippine Opera Company

The Sondheim fanatic in me can somehow die happy having seen a topnotch production of this most challenging show. Dotnet version of the review here.

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'Passion' is a scintillating work of art

Company call at opening night of "Passion."

The key to unlocking James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's "Passion,"which director Robbie Guevara has summoned to superlative life for Philippine Opera Company, is in a lyric late in the musical.

The soldier Giorgio, his life unraveled, sings to the ailing Fosca: "Love within reason--that isn't love."

Now juxtapose that with his earlier rebuke of what he calls her "insatiable, smothering pursuit" of him: "Love's not a constant demand; it's a gift you bestow. Love isn't sudden surrender--it's tender and slow; it must grow."

This plunge from reason to irrationality is the essence of "Passion"--what the American psychologist Robert Sternberg defined in his Triangular Theory as the maddening emotional and sometimes illogical component of love.

Such madness is ever present in Guevara's staging of this musical, in which Giorgio, already the lover of the married Clara, is reassigned to a rural military outpost and finds himself the unwitting object of Fosca's obsession. And out of madness, Guevara has fashioned a living, breathing, scintillating work of art--a production that illuminates extensively the work at hand, allowing the audience a deeper understanding of what they're seeing and hearing, as only great theater does.

Auditory knockout

Among Sondheim's works, "Passion" is perhaps the most difficult musically. Performed without intermission, it is almost sung-through, such that it is hard to differentiate where one quasi-operatic melody ends and the next begins.

But under musical director Daniel Bartolome's baton, the score becomes an auditory knockout, and the singing in this production surely qualifies as one of the year's most sumptuous and accomplished.

Even bigger of a triumph is the synergy between Guevara's vision and his first-rate design team, how everything and everyone onstage looks and feels like they belong to the same make-believe world and exist on similar musical and dramatic wavelengths.

This "Passion" is a bizarre, bedazzling dreamscape come to life, thanks to Jason Tecson's painterly set and Shakira Villa Symes' ravishing play between light and darkness.

Most importantly, the twisted love triangle at the helm, too, comes across as cut from the same genius fabric.

The centerpiece is Shiela Valderrama-Martinez's titanic, haunting portrait of tragedy as Fosca--desperation and alienation, the "other-ed" and the spurned all combined to create what is so far the year's most breathtaking performance by an actress in a musical.

Opposite her, Vien King delivers this production's curve ball turn as Giorgio, his character's onstage journey undertaken so convincingly with admirable restraint. And Jasmine Fitzgerald--like King, in only her first major stage role--is a stunning presence as Clara.

Side by side, King and Fitzgerald are a paragon of conscientious costuming (the drop-dead gorgeous gowns by Zenaida Gutierrez) and makeup (by Myrene Santos): They literally look like they walked out of an otherworldly painting.

Even the casting and attack to the characters work in ways that subvert expectations. King's Giorgio, for instance, isn't some strapping, debonair soldier, but almost an adolescent--lustful and lost, his emotional turmoil between Clara and Fosca--and ultimate undoing by the latter--therefore, made more believable, if not inevitable.

And as the outpost commander, Raul Montesa, through sheer quiet, elevates what could potentially be a wallflower supporting part into this production's most convincing inhabitant.

The key to this production, then, lies in how it alternates between quiet and nose--between deafening silence and the overwhelming rush and surge of feeling through song. It is its title, after all.

This "Passion" isn't mere by-the-books chamber opera; it is its love triangle made manifest--it creeps on you like subtle sickness, until you are completely in its thrall, unable to look away yet also unable to resist looking.

PDI Review: 'Rak of Aegis' by PETA - 2019 run

I have now seen this musical 10 times--including three visits this year for this review, the Inquirer.net version of which is here.

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'Rak of Aegis': Fully embodying spirit of camp, Jenine Desiderio, Leah Patricio light up stage in this rerun

Curtain call at "Rak of Aegis," featuring Derrick Monasterio, Leah Patricio and Jenine Desiderio.

These days, two women are lighting up the stage at the Peta Theater Center, where "Rak of Aegis" has returned for its record-setting sixth rerun, having racked up over 400 performances as of this writing since its 2014 premiere.

Jenine Desiderio (of the original West End cast of "Miss Saigon") is the new Mary Jane, captain of fictional, perennially flooded Barangay Venezia, where the story takes place. Leah Patricio, third placer in "The Voice of the Philippines" Season 2, is now Mercy, mother of Aileen, whose big voice and even bigger dream of landing a spot on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" set the story in motion.

Both women are among the seven new principal cast members of the musical, which, as we wrote in our review of the 2016 run, has become "a pilgrimage site of sorts for performers." But they are the only ones who hit their respective marks unequivocally.

Their roof-rattling singing is a given (as it should be with anyone who joins "Rak"). But what makes them two of the best casting additions in the musical's entire history is how completely they embody the spirit of camp.

Onstage, beyond being such generous actresses, they are devoid of vanity; when they go big, they go really, really big--and also appropriately loud, in Patricio's case--you realize you haven't laughed this much while watching "Rak," an already pretty hilarious show to begin with.

Desiderio is even more noteworthy: She's the only Mary Jane we've seen who has been able to unleash the character's comic potential.

Reason to revisit

Those who are seeing the musical for only the first time should be so lucky to catch Desiderio and Patricio in their respective roles. Those who are considering revisiting the show should find the women reason enough to do so.

Never mind that the other new additions to the cast don't fare as well. For instance, singer-songwriter Noel Cabangon is a rather stiff actor, even if he aces the vocal acrobatics of his role as Aileen's father.

Bayang Barrios, as an alternate to Desiderio, is more puzzling: She sure can sing those Aegis tunes--her voice giving the show authentic, rock-star huskiness--but her characterization is all over the place, relying on unnecessary ad-libs as a crutch, even as the role has been retooled to accommodate her Bisaya tongue.

The worst, however, is matinee idol Derrick Monasterio, in the role of jologs boatman Tolits--for which he is absolutely, painfully miscast. Tolits is supposed to be Aileen's romantic second choice--not conventionally handsome; always has been and is used to being overlooked; "nutty" and "deliriously zany," to go by former Inquirer Theater editor Gibbs Cadiz's appraisal of Pepe Herrera's definitive take on the role.

Monasterio is neither nutty nor deliriously zany, and looks like he can win the Mister Universe title in his sleep.

If further proof were needed that theater is a process of constant evolution and learning from mistakes--what works, what doesn't work, who is or isn't fit for a certain role--here it is.

PDI Opinion: 'Theater and politics are inseparable'

My latest opinion piece, on the Irene Marcos debacle last week, is in today's paper.

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'Theater and politics are inseparable'

In a just world, the Marcoses wouldn't be walking free today; at the very least, they would be locked up someplace, paying for all the lives they harmed and all the money they stole from this country during their two-decade-long tyranny.

But this is not a just world, and so you have the wife of the dead dictator still roaming free despite (finally) being convicted of corruption, or his son almost winning the vice presidency, or one of his daughters showing up ever so casually at the premieres of plays and art exhibits.

That last bit doesn't usually land the limelight, mostly because of the ephemeral, insular, small-scale nature of such events. But it happened again last week--so soon after that incident at Ateneo de Manila University in April, when said daughter graced the inauguration of the new amphitheater, the resulting, deafening backlash leading to the resignation of a top-brass school official.

At Friday's opening night of the latest play by Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas, the official performing arts group of the University of the Philippines-Diliman, one of the audience members was no less than that same daughter herself. The uproar that ensued at the venue, and which quickly seeped into social media, was nothing if not expected.

Caught on record as well via The Philippine Collegian, the university's student-run publication, was the play's director telling off the student protesters that "UP should remain a democratic space."

In a sense, the director had a point: UP is, indeed, a democratic space. For the image of the university as a homogenous body of truth defenders and freedom warriors is but a myth. It is no secret that, while being home to the fiercest activists and patriots of this country, UP is also a nest of loyalists and defenders of despotic political families past and present. There is probably no better microcosm of Philippine society today.

It is ironic that in this school that birthed some of the greatest Filipino protest art--the university theater scene itself responsible for many important, galvanizing pieces--a spawn of the despot can just enter as she pleases, thereby spitting on the memory of all those who bravely, and fatally, resisted the Marcos regime.

It is doubly ironic when you consider that one of UP's most recent stage hits happened to be Floy Quintos' "The Kundiman Party," about a fictional world-renowned songstress who spurned the patronage of the Marcoses.

Anyone who remembers knows how that family used art as a perfume to please the middle class and fool the poor (see: the Manila Film Center). Still, today, there remains a multitude of artists who, having benefited from the Marcoses' patronage in the past (some of them children at the time), persist in their blind loyalty to the family--or at the very least, refuse to bite the proverbial hand that fed them, even if that hand butchered and disappeared thousands of their countrymen.

In this, it is helpful to remember what the playwright Rody Vera said in an interview earlier this year: "Theater and politics are inseparable, not only in content but also in form." He was talking about his new play premiering on the UP stage, "Nana Rosa," which tackled the conveniently ignored history of Filipino comfort women during the Japanese occupation--but he might as well have been talking about any other play, in any other time.

Theater, as with all art, does not exist in a vacuum. It can have far-reaching consequences, and the ability to precipitate change on a national platform. As such, plays do not begin and end with the rise and fall of their curtains; what we see onstage matters just as much as everything and everyone else that surrounds it offstage--who writes the play, who works in it, who finances it, who gets invited to see it first.

The craft may take on many colors, but when it comes to issues as integral to the Filipino consciousness as the Marcos dictatorship, the conversation can only be in black and white. In this climate of blatant historical revisionism, civil liberty should not and should never be invoked as an excuse to fraternize with the biggest crooks in this nation's history. There shouldn't be room for spineless neutrality.

What, then, has UP done, or is doing? Not much, by the looks of it. In fact, this isn't the first time the Marcoses have figured in the university's arts scene, either in name or in person. The issue, I predict, will proceed as such issues have mostly proceeded in this country: First, the outrage. Then, the discourse. Then, the amnesia. Then, the air kisses and bonhomie. 

PDI Review: 'Perfect Ten' - Lea Salonga in Concert

The thrill, nowadays, of a Lea Salonga concert lies in her guest performers. In that aspect, "Perfect Ten" certainly did not disappoint. The website version of my review here.

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'Perfect Ten': Lea Salonga still peerless

In concert at the Philippine International Convention Center last year to celebrate her 40th anniversary in show business, Lea Salonga was joined by Simon Bowman, who flew all the way from the United Kingdom, where, 30 years ago, the two headlined the West End premiere of "Miss Saigon."

Last weekend, Salonga hit the concert stage again in "Perfect Ten," backed by the ABS-CBN Philharmonic Orchestra under her brother Gerard, to celebrate Resorts World Manila's first decade. This time, she was joined by another "Saigon" costar: Michael K. Lee, who appeared alongside her during the final month of the musical's original Broadway production.

The evening's set list consisted of songs Salonga had sung before; no surprise that she knocked them out of the park yet again, her astoundingly crystalline sound still peerless hereabouts (or anywhere else, really).

The highlights included the Broadway anthems "Still Hurting" from "The Last Five Years" and "Back to Before" from "Ragtime," as well as the Barbra Streisand original "Evergreen," all rendered with stark emotional transparency. And her "Les Miserables" staple, "On My Own," was a real treat--performed in full, which she doesn't do very often nowadays.

There were also other guests: Tanya Manalang (with a ravishing, gender-swapped "Out There" from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"), Salonga's daughter Nicole Chien and an underutilized Esang de Torres.

Chief surprise

But the chief surprise came in the form of Lee--though this wasn't his first time appearing on the Manila stage (he played opposite Salonga in the 2000 production of "They're Playing Our Song").

An established musical theater actor in both America and Seoul, Lee got to sing only two solos that night--"'Til I Hear You Sing" from "Love Never Dies," the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera"; and "This Is the Moment," which many Filipinos would recognize from karaoke sessions and singing contests, but is actually from the musical "Jekyll and Hyde."

Two plum songs were enough to unveil the titanic breadth of Lee's talent as a vocalist. With seemingly inhuman ease, he scaled those punishing notes, each number a transfixing performance that crescendoed almost without notice, and made even more jaw-dropping for the remarkable quiet of his technique (if anyone heard him inhale between phrases, do notify us).

Lee appears to be that rare leading man--deft with both bombast (see: the aforementioned songs) and soft boys (as when he did Aladdin in "A Whole New World," or even the male parts in the "Saigon" medley of "Sun and Moon" and "The Last Night of the World").

Salonga was deservedly the star of the show, of course, but Lee made you realize your sheer luck (and probably wise decision-making) to have caught this particular concert. As he walked off the stage, there wasn't a more perfect moment for that oft-chanted concert mantra: More!