It’s not every day you get to watch Conrad Ricamora absolutely act his ass off five feet away from you.
But that was exactly my experience at the March 19 performance of A Chorus Line, the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical now in the thick of a rare three-week stint in the Philippines—47 years after it premiered in the country under Repertory Philippines. Running until March 29 at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater, Makati City, this iteration is presented by Theatre Group Asia (TGA).
Followers of American TV might recognize Ricamora from How to Get Away with Murder, the legal drama series headlined by Viola Davis from 2014 to 2020. But if you really know your anglophone theater, you’d know that the actor has appeared in some of the most notable Asian- and Asian-American-centric productions of the last decade and a half in New York: the disco-pop Imelda Marcos musical Here Lies Love, the last revival of The King and I on Broadway, David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s Soft Power. Last year, he received his first Tony nomination playing a closeted Abraham Lincoln in the hit comedy Oh, Mary!.
It wasn’t until four years ago, however, that I first watched Ricamora perform in something. That would be Fire Island, the 2022 film adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice, directed by Andrew Ahn. Fire Island basically reimagined Austen’s novel from a queer lens, setting the story in the eponymous gay haven in New York. Austen’s band of romance-hungry English sisters was now a group of gay friends on holiday in contemporary United States, their problems cast against the larger tapestry of LGBTQIA+ issues surrounding sex, intimacy, and romance.
Ricamora had relatively few lines in the film—or so I remember. He played the counterpart of the novel’s Mr. Darcy, the aloof male hero who, despite himself, eventually ends up with the heroine Elizabeth. Ricamora’s take on the character more or less followed the mold of the original. He brooded—a lot—acted rude, and came across as repulsive most of the time, so clumsy was he in the language of love. But, oh, how he smoldered! In his quiet, he was the sexiest presence in that film, his coldness a strange form of hypnosis. He made you want to follow his love—no matter how inarticulate—to the ends of that sweet earth.
It’s this same brand of magnetism that Ricamora now brings to A Chorus Line. The 1975 musical, widely hailed a landmark piece of theater, is perhaps most famous for having an entire ensemble as its stars, all of them more or less accorded the same level of stereotypical stardom (in contrast to the traditional show structure top-billed by a clear leading man and/or lady, followed by featured performers, and then the ensemble). That atypical structure is in service to the story: The musical is a show within-a-show, taking place at a fictional audition for Broadway dancers.
Ricamora plays Zach, the stern director and auditions overseer of the fictional show. Interestingly, it’s a role without its own solo number—all the other notable characters, the “audition hopefuls,” each have their big song, or at least share a prolonged moment in the spotlight with someone else. So it’s a testament to Ricamora’s skills as an actor that Zach has unexpectedly become one of the two most compelling presences in this production.
As written, A Chorus Line is like one long therapy session with multiple patients: Zach is the therapist, and the auditionees are his patients. Trying to get to know his potential dancers better, Zach would call them one by one and throw them basic-sounding questions: “When did you start dancing?” “Why are you in this business?” “What was your family like?” As each auditionee gets their turn answering a question, they would eventually segue into song and dance. The playwriting technique is rather on-the-nose here. If auditions really went like this, shrinks might just become passé.
The beauty of Ricamora’s performance lies in his voice: It’s just truly outstanding voice work. Zach basically sets the mood for most of the songs, and Ricamora aces all that, conveying with the slightest changes in tone, inflection, and volume entire backstories, and a multitude of emotions. It’s the art of speaking at its finest. You do not doubt for a second that this director is not messing around, but you also feel it in your bones that he genuinely cares for his dancers.
One sly trick up its sleeve
This production has one sly trick up its sleeve: It makes Ricamora roam the theater, talking to the auditionees from the orchestra section, among the audience members, then later, from the loge, one level up. The device elevates the musical’s audition conceit—now the whole audience has become the casting director, watching the auditions alongside Zach.
That’s essentially how I came to witness Ricamora’s work up close. Seated at the loge, I couldn’t always see the actor when he was roaming the orchestra section—and the effect was uncanny, that authoritative voice echoing throughout the theater now akin to the voice of God, an unseen omnipresent master. Later, he was only two seats away from me as he administered the auditions from my section. It didn’t really make much sense why he’d be so high up—the Filipino phrase “trip niya lang” comes to mind—but who cares? It’s a fun gimmick, and it’s also a welcome, zoomed-in view of one of Broadway’s finest, underrated actors literally in the thick of his process.
As a whole, this production of A Chorus Line is terrific—a welcome addition to a so-far exciting and promising year in Manila theater. For one, it has given us some of the most intoxicating dancing in local musical theater in recent memory, joining the likes of last year’s Shrek the Musical by Full House Theater Company and Bar Boys: The Musical by Barefoot Theatre Collaborative, Newsies by 9 Works Theatrical, Ang Huling El Bimbo at Newport World Resorts, and Ang Nawalang Kapatid by Dulaang UP.
Truth be told, it’s a bummer that the show seems to be playing to many empty seats, if only to go by the performance I attended (and the status of other performances on Ticketworld)—and especially following the sold-out success of TGA’s Into the Woods last year. (In this vein, I am reminded of the international touring production of Chicago at The Theatre at Solaire in 2014—another unjustly poorly attended affair that similarly featured go-for-broke, backbreaking dancing.)
In A Chorus Line, the choreography (by Emmy winner Karla Puno Garcia, who also directs) results in one scintillating, breathtaking sequence after another that all feels fresh, modern, hip. I wouldn’t have expected anything less; A Chorus Line, after all, is renowned for being a dance musical. To pull off its dance-auditions milieu, it needs to cast really good dancers, first of all, who can also act and sing well.
The elevated vantage point of the loge section affords the perfect view to appreciate Puno Garcia’s heady terpsichorean concoction, enhanced by set designer Miguel Urbino’s play with moving mirror panels, frequently bordered with bold lighting by Cha See. That Act I ender (Gimme the Ball) is the literal definition of sensory overload, the dancers (with a standout Rapah Manalo) assembling and disassembling themselves in various configurations like an eternally oscillating entity—at one point, a triangular formation that’s thoroughly electric and unmistakably alive—invoking the thrill of celebration, the ecstatic riot of a fiesta, as if these auditionees had all landed the job. And that finale—One—is simply glorious, with the entire cast now garbed in shimmering tuxedoes and top hats, their golden attire striking against the stark black background, the choreography a mesmerizing symphony of lines and lights. It’s honestly one of the most spectacular endings I’ve seen in my years covering the theater.
Apart from Ricamora, the other compelling presence in this production is Lissa deGuzman as Cassie, the veteran dancer now in the throes of a slow period in her career—and downgrading herself by vying for a part in this dance ensemble just so she could have a job. DeGuzman is maybe the most expressive presence on that stage, in arguably the show’s meatiest role: a whirlwind of pathos and rugged resolve that all but drives home the musical’s point that a dancer’s life is hardly one of luxury. When deGuzman sings The Music and the Mirror, it’s a wistful vision of many Cassies reflected in Urbino’s mirrors, evoking the veteran’s many past lives.
An embarrassment of riches
The entire cast, in fact, is an embarrassment of riches—many of them hardworking regulars of Manila’s ensembles through the years. Notably, Mikaela Regis—a Gawad Buhay-nominated playwright for Unica Hijas—makes her mark as the spunky Sheila, while Universe Ramos is revelatory as Paul, delivering a performance of arresting minimalism and emotional clarity.
I found the supposed dramatic climax of the musical sort of a letdown, though. Late in the second act, Ricamora’s Zach loses it with deGuzman’s Cassie—by then he’s spent a good amount of time pointing out one tiny error after another in her dancing (deGuzman, for her part, is very good in playing up these small yet noticeable imperfections). Then, the “big” revelation: The two have a romantic past, and, at one point, even lived together. It’s all very melodramatic—an “ungkátan ng past,” to use the Taglish expression, that makes you wonder why it’s worth our time in the first place. In Filipino, “Ano ba ang problema ninyo, at bakit kailangan may paké kami?”
From there, I briefly zoned out and started thinking about the current state of global affairs, about the genocide in Palestine, Zionist expansionism in West Asia, and the relentless bombing and ecocide in Iran; about the skyrocketing fuel prices in the Philippines, how oil conglomerates in the country are getting away with disgusting profiteering amidst the lack of legal regulation; about the sheer fact that not one bigwig politician has been jailed from the scandal surrounding flood control projects last year. Amidst such a desolate reality, the problems of these fictional dancers suddenly seemed so…trivial. Banal. Small. It’s that “Kim, there’s people that are dying” meme from Keeping Up with the Kardashians made manifest.
But then that glorious, ovation-worthy ending rolled around, and I was back in that theater, completely alive as I beheld this singular sensation of a cast. A sold-out run would have been well-deserved.
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