Vincen, Without a T

You who's reading this: Please watch Kakki Teodoro's second and final performance on Feb. 23 at 2:30 p.m. The website version of my review here.

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How the manic-depressive becomes truly brilliant

Teresa Herrera (center) during an interactive segment in "Every Brilliant Thing." The volunteer in plaid long sleeves on the left is the genius radiologist Scott Ong, who used to be my former colleague at the Philippine General Hospital.

One: ice cream. Two: water fights. Three: staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV.

So goes the list of brilliant things at the heart of Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe's one-person play, "Every Brilliant Thing," now being given two vastly different lives by The Sandbox Collective under Jenny Jamora's sprightly, frequently playful direction.

In this 90-minute monologue, a girl journeys from childhood to early adulthood accompanied by the specter of her mother's mental illness and repeated suicide attempts. Bereft of more sophisticated coping mechanisms as a child, the protagonist crafts a litany of the things she deems wonderful in her universe, a sort of shield against, and antidote to, heartaches and hardships she can barely fathom.

Tricks up their sleeves

But the playwrights have tricks up their sleeves. The conceit of this play is that it is a journey the audience, too must embark on. Many scenes involve volunteer viewers assuming some role or other opposite the narrator, who also requires the help of most audience members to shout out the items on that pivotal list she repeatedly invokes throughout the show.

Which is to say, what if the selected participants aren't--for lack of better words--good and game enough? It's a rattling thought, but thankfully, both times we caught this show, the volunteers were swell.

As with any monologue, the performer becomes the show, and the show becomes the performance. In Sandbox's production, two actresses alternate: Teresa Herrera and Kakki Teodoro.

Herrera, whose face has been on every promotional material, provides a capable, charismatic performance. She is grace personified, and in her hands, the show becomes a distanced narrator surveying and making sense of the past alongside the audience.

But the greater performance inarguably belongs to Teodoro. In a word, she's fearless--exhilaratingly fearless. She leads the audience by the arm, then pushes them deep into the character's turbulent past. This way, the story becomes so much more alive; one actually endures the narrator's wellspring of feelings, her happiness and sadness, all her ups and downs.

Teodoro's show more precisely captures the play's essence, which is the fleshing out of a manic-depressive personality. She evokes with breathtaking emotional range what the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical "Next to Normal," whose central character has bipolar disorder, puts into words as "the manic, magic days, and the dark, depressing nights."

In the interactive segments (especially with those very enthusiastic volunteers during the show we caught), you almost think Teodoro wouldn't be able to gracefully handle the dips and curves thrown at her. But the way she takes the wheel, sometimes even pushing the play into the realm of meta with her hilarious ad-libs, is astonishing and flat-out delightful.

If it isn't clear enough, that, right there, is a star performance. And it's an injustice that Teodoro, bafflingly labeled an "alternate," is set to appear for only one more date--the 2:30 p.m. matinee on Feb. 23.

One more thing, regardless of the actress, this "Every Brilliant Thing" owes much of its success to Arvy Dimaculangan's sound design. It's always easier to notice the soundscape when it is bad, but here, it is topnotch. Listen to how he modulates and times the sound effects; how and when he favors quiet over noise and vice versa; even just his actual choice of sound as prop. The story not only advances, but also becomes more immersive, because of Dimaculangan's work, which is a truly brilliant thing.

My advancer/interview feature on "Coriolano" and "Nana Rosa" is also in today's paper. The website version here.

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When Filipino politics takes center stage

Scene in "Coriolano."

When two of the country's most prolific playwrights premiere new work within days of each other, one simply must pay attention, especially in this age of fake news and rampant historical revisionism.

Last night, Guelan Luarca's Filipino-language adaptation of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus"--now "Coriolano"--opened at the Cultural Center of the Philippines under Tanghalang Pilipino. On Feb. 27, Rody Vera's latest original piece, "Nana Rosa," will begin performances at the University of the Philippines-Diliman as the final season offering of UP Playwrights' Theatre (UPPT).

"It's the perfect antidote to the oversimplifications in terms of politics," says Luarca of "Coriolano," whose titular character makes the jump from war general to Roman statesman--and unwittingly sets himself up for a fatal downfall.

"All the characters [in 'Coriolano'] are problematic, with individual agenda. And that's politics: not black and white, but always about agenda and patronage. Everything is a compromise. That's the saddening and absurd political despair we must learn to live with."

Only choices

Luarca cites the upcoming midterm elections as a prime illustration: "As much as I vow not to vote for any candidate from Duterte's camp, there are also those super 'Dilawan' candidates [strongly identified with the opposing Liberal Party] that made me go, 'Are these the only choices we have?'

"The world is not divided between 'DDS' [rabid Duterte supporters] and 'Dilawan' [opposition fanatics]. That's the false dichotomy and egoism and unnuanced political imagination that Shakespeare critiques in this play. Imagine if he wrote this in 2019!"

Vera' piece, on the other hand, seeks to fight a much older battle--one that dates all the way back to the last World War.

"Nana Rosa" dramatizes the life of Rosa Henson, the first Filipino woman to publicly come out as a comfort woman during World War II. Henson "inspired other former comfort women to come out as well and tell their stories, which up to now are being denied by the Japanese government," Vera says.

In April of last year, the Duterte administration removed a memorial--one that commemorated the struggles and heroism of the Filipino comfort woman--on Roxas Boulevard in Manila, "in response to Japanese Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Seiko Noda's 'displeasure' over the established statue." The government later stated that the removal was executed to give way to some drainage improvement project in the area.

"The struggle of the Filipino comfort woman needed closure and affirmation. And this taking down of the statue was obviously a terrible way to leave the issue open," says Vera, whose play actually started out as a screenplay commissioned by Star Cinema.

"The main point is to consistently remind us that [the abuse of comfort women] happened, even as the Japanese government keeps erasing it from its history books. Our collective memories are too malleable. We not only easily forget, but are also easily swayed by distorted versions of our past--be it about the Marcos dictatorship or a more distant era."

Despite its historical content, "'Nana Rosa' is inevitably a political play," says Vera. "It tackles almost all the issues related to war, colonial invasion and oppression."

Then again, Vera affirms: "Theater and politics are inseparable, not only in content but also in form. When I do write for theater and film, the first thing that sparks my interest are stories that are naturally political; that is what I mostly look for in any play I attend."

"All the greatest plays are political. I cannot imagine any theater piece that does not tackle anything political."

Okay. Officially one of the worst things I have ever seen. Website version here.

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'Miong': Looking for the Rep we know and love

Curtain call at "Miong."

There was a time when the musicals of Repertory Philippines were actually highlights of their seasons--for instance, Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo's refreshingly scaled-back "Jekyll and Hyde" in 2012; or Jaime del Mundo's romp of a production that was "The Producers" in 2013; or even 2009's "Sweeney Todd," which, while too "safe and bloodless," as Inquirer's former theater editor Gibbs Cadiz wrote, was nevertheless "expertly sung, technically polished [and] thrilling in moments."

What happened?

"Miong," the latest song-and-dance specimen Rep has put together, thunderously begs that question.

When this sung-through, English-language retelling of the life of Emilio Aguinaldo--but only until the declaration of independence in Kawit, Cavite--first made a splash in the late '90s, it was "a three-hour marathon with a cast of 50," director Joy Virata writes in her program notes.

Now the musical has been pared down to two hours, with a much smaller cast. So why does it feel like a drawn-out relic.

We don't even have to dissect in detail the musical's clumsy, borderline-revisionist handling of history--how it reduces Aguinaldo's complicated hero-traitor persona to something straight out of a childish fairy tale; how it deals with the Aguinaldo-sanctioned execution of Andres Bonifacio in a way that makes the whole grisly affair seem almost like an aside, with the Aguinaldo character even taking to the stage to sing about his eventual remorse and regret.

The happiest of news is that "Miong's" (understandably) one-sided take on facts is now the least of its problems. This revival makes you wonder why, with the wealth of available material, Rep chose this piece to open its 82nd season.

It could be that age hasn't been kind to "Miong." For one, the score (with Virata's lyrics and Ian Monsod's music) is a curiously repetitive creature that sounds like the love child of the Boublil-Schönberg "Les Miserables" and a good number of Disney movies.

The story as written is also problematic: It comes off as a protracted Buwan ng Wika presentation, the myriad of scenes--some straight out of the "Les Mis" playbook--hardly bearing dramatic tension.

But then, we also have a set that looks like it wasn't part of the budget; lights that manically alternate among shades of red, yellow and blue (if this is a play on the Philippine flag, it is not helping advance the story at all); and a sound design that seems to have forgotten the audience and have taken into account only the stage (the show literally sounds like it's being played from a ramshackle cassette player). Meanwhile, the costumes are so pristine, they may as well have come straight out of the factory.

Worst is that for a two-hour show, the musical feels unending: It's just a succession of mechanical scenes limply directed and choreographed the same way, so that at some point, it feels like you've been watching the same thing again and again. Everything here is either a showstopper or a smaller showstopper.

The pivotal part of "Miong" belongs to Timothy Pavino (Team Lea of "The Voice of the Philippines" Season 2). And credit where it is due: His glorious singing really helps get you through the whole ordeal. On the other hand, his portrayal of Aguinaldo lacks gravitas, or even just some concrete, detailed idea of a character that would set him apart from a man playing dress-up.

That problem extends to the entire musical, actually: For a period-specific show about the first Filipino president, it has a frail grasp of being Filipino (save for that climactic flag-raising sequence). There's no firm sense of time and place, and more importantly, of personhood and nationhood here.

Maybe "Miong" was a far different animal back in the '90s. Now, it's simply an exhausting show that isn't at all representative of the Rep we know and have all come to love.

In 2005, I was in sixth grade and completely clueless about theater. Then, my brother introduced me to this newly released movie musical called "The Phantom of the Opera." And so began the journey. The website version of my review here--which reminds me, the Inquirer-Lifestyle website has undergone a facelift and I'm still not sure what to make of it.

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Jonathan Roxmouth's Phantom is worth your trip to the 'Opera'

Gala night curtain call at "The Phantom of the Opera"-Manila 2019.

The thing with musical theater royalty--those immortal, wildly popular pieces such as "Les Miserables" or "The Phantom of the Opera"--is that it either completely blows you away or it doesn't. There is no middle ground.

That thought comes in handy when parsing the production of "Phantom" currently playing at The Theatre at Solaire--the world premiere of the 2019 international tour and the second visit to the country of Broadway's longest-running show.

Like the 2012 version that was Manila's first encounter with the musical's masked genius, this "Phantom" is also a replica production of the original (meaning, other than the actors, what you see here is essentially what you'd see on Broadway and London--direction, choreography, design).

To a certain extent, this "Phantom" lives up to the hype surrounding it. The singing, as expected, is topnotch--to be otherwise would be tantamount to heresy. This Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart baby is arguably the most musically accomplished among the British megamusicals of the '80s.

"The Masquerade" sequence remains a peerless visual spectacle. The costumes, the dancing, the unveiling of the draped set at the beginning--taken together, they may justify the steep price of admission.

Measured tiptoes

And yet, something's amiss.

Implicit in this musical is the idea of heightened theatricality. For starters, nothing here is short of lavish; everything is grand and meant to awe. Opera sequences--those pockets of Drama with a capital D--abound. A chandelier crashes on the stage; a subterranean lair lit by candelabras is almost a plot point in itself. Heck, the whole story is about a disfigured man haunting an opera house and obsessing over a vacuous ingénue, and acting on this obsession to ridiculous lengths.

Heightened theatricality, this production seems aware it must serve. But it does so mechanically, in a way that feels almost too respectful to the original. Instead of broad, hyperbolic steps, most of the time we get measured tiptoes.

With this tiptoeing, comedy eludes this "Phantom," while the drama becomes a note-by-note unfolding. On gala night, the jokes effortlessly went over the audience's heads, on one hand. The love story, on the other hand, could hardly get the temperature, let along the tension, up.

Perhaps this is precisely the thing with replicas: In their pursuit of parroted perfection, they run the risk of coming across as antiseptic and devoid of personality.

This "Phantom," with director Arthur Masella at the helm, also features Meghan Picerno's bland, occasionally robotic Christine (her placeless Act II solo, "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again," simply comes and goes); Beverley Chiat's too-mannered and almost-humorless Carlotta; Melina Kalomas as a taxidermied Madame Giry; and, not that it matters significantly, an ovoid chandelier of little oomph.

Commanding creation

Thank the theater gods, then, for Jonathan Roxmouth. His Phantom seven years ago at the Cultural Center of the Philippines was already a commanding creation. Now it is the single thing in this show that firmly grasps the heightened theater of the piece--a performance elevating a production. Here, the masked madman becomes the only character worth caring about, and it also doesn't hurt that Roxmouth sings the score like the music were composed with his voice in mind.

Roxmouth's performance alone makes the pilgrimage to this "Phantom" worth your while. (A second peek, if you were there the first time around, is far from unreasonable.) Come with your own mask, though. A clear view of this production beyond its Phantom might just prove the slightest bit, well, disenchanting.

Certain people are now in my blacklist of interview subjects, and that is all I'm gonna say. The website version of this piece--one of two I have today--here.

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Eraserheads--by way of Myke Salomon--now on CD

Great news: You can now listen to Myke Salomon's radical, revivifying take on the seminal Filipino rock band Eraserheads in the comfort of home or car or computer.

Joining the ranks of warhorses such as "ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal" and "Kung Paano Ako Naging Leading Lady," the stage musical "Ang Huling El Bimbo" has released an original cast recording, now on sale at the foyer of Resorts World Manila's Newport Performing Arts Theater, where the production has returned for a second life.

The album has 14 tracks sung by the original cast--the performers from the musical's 2018 premiere--plus one bonus track performed by the new cast members.

Legacy

It's no secret that the best thing about "El Bimbo" is its music. About the initial run last year, Inquirer reviewer Emil Hofileña wrote: "['El Bimbo'] understands the legacy of its source material, and [Salomon] boldly resists catering to our expectations," resulting in a production "stuffed with thrilling musical moments."

The Eraserheads is only the latest addition to what is already a peerless body of work hereabouts--one that embraces just about every genre, from the vocal cord-busting pop rock of Aegis (for "Rak of Aegis") to the nationalistic rap of Francis M (for "3 Stars and a Sun"), the old-school Original Pilipino Music in the rerun of "Dirty Old Musical."

And yet, Salomon admits to being apprehensive about taking on this project when the producers approached him in 2016. "Eraserheads was the reason my elementary school afternoons were all about picking up a beat-up guitar and learning how to strum G, D, Em, C chords. My though bubble was like, 'My God, what a big responsibility.' But I took on the challenge. Might as well be the culprit of the failure/success of the project."

"The tricky part [has always been] to find the right song for a scene," Salomon adds. "Thinking out of the box is not enough. Thinking out of this world is the better option. After fully understanding each scene and character, I just trust my first gut feel. For example, 'Pare Ko,' [now a military march of sorts]--it was clear in my head that I will go that way. The first scene with Tiya Dely--taking it from her name, 'Tiya/Cha,' I went Cha-cha/Latin with it."

For the album, Salomon served as record producer, with JC Magsalin of the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra as band conductor and orchestrator. Work started last November, while Salomon starred in "Mula sa Buwan," with the final mixing session wrapping up barely two weeks before the "El Bimbo" rerun's March 1 premiere.

Reb Atadero, one of the many returning cast members from last year, says, "[Recording the album] was absolutely surreal. I grew up listening to these songs, and you're telling me the first album I'm ever going to be part of is me singing those songs?"

Concurs Tanya Manalang, another "El Bimbo" veteran and formerly of the 2014 West End revival of "Miss Saigon": "The recording demanded the same energy and connection as doing the actual show. Even though I'd done Trumpets''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' back in '97, ['El Bimbo'] still felt like my first [time doing a cast album], given that I was more involved in the process. We were there on most days of the recording. The boys and I stayed in the studio and watched each other do our individual tracks."

"During the first run, we're told around 53,000 people saw the show," adds Atadero. "With the recording, we can reach all those people [again], and then some."

"Nothing beats the actual capture of everyone making music harmoniously," says Salomon. "Last year, people kept asking if we would sell a recording of the show, [so] I hope this CD makes them happy. This is a rare opportunity to immortalize the musical."

I have two pieces out today! Here's the first one--the website version here.

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Miguel Faustmann: Theater is always my first choice

For its 10th season, Repertory Philippines (Rep) mounted the classic Jerry Herman musical "Hello, Dolly!" with Baby Barredo in the titular role and Zenaida "Bibot" Amador directing. One of the ensemble members, then a newbie to professional theater, was Miguel Faustmann.

That was 1975. More than 40 years later, Faustmann has become one of those rare show-business chameleons who shift between the stage and the screen, and transition from performer to director to designer, with seeming ease.

Fans and admirers of Jerrold Tarog's historical epics would probably recognize Faustmann as Gen. Arthur MacArthur Jr. in "Heneral Luna" (2015) and its sequel "Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral" (2018). Home viewers loyal to GMA Network might still remember him from the relatively short-lived fantasy series "Victor Magtanggol," lopped off from Thor of Norse lore.

But Faustmann's heart indubitably belongs to the stage. "We earn better in films and TV, but theater is always my first choice," he says. "I always wanted to be in theater. Since elementary (in La Salle Green Hills), I was always in school plays. In high school, I joined Teatro Fil-Hispanico doing a number of Spanish plays."

And after "Hello, Dolly!"? Juan Peron in "Evita," King Arthur in "Camelot," Don Quixote in "Man of La Mancha," Capt. Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," Martin Dysart in "Equus," Fagin in "Oliver!"--a gold mine of prestige roles seized with only the benefit of "purely Zenaida Amador training," as he calls it.

The last four of his six nominations for the Philstage Gawad Buhay Awards are testaments to his versatility as a theater animal: an acting nomination in 2016 for 9 Works Theatrical's "A Christmas Carol"; and three nominations in 2014, for directing Rep's "Wait Until Dark" and designing the sets of Rep's two other nonmusical plays that year, "August: Osage County" and "Noises Off."

Written for me

Next week, Faustmann returns to acting for Rep, when the company premieres its second season offering, Eric Chappell's "Father's Day." He plays Henry, a cantankerous divorcé, whose estranged son and ex-wife descend upon his house one winter evening.

"Funny, but sometimes I think [the role] was written for me," Faustmann says. "I relate to his living alone and the quirks one has when one lives alone.

"I've done both plays and musicals, but I prefer to be in a play. Musicals are more of fantasy--entertaining for an audience because of song and dance. But we don't burst into song in real life."

"Father's Day" reunites Faustmann with Barredo, in her directorial comeback for Rep, and teams him up with Rep stalwart Liesl Batucan (as his onstage ex-wife), newcomer Andres Borromeo (as his onstage son), and the sisters Becca and Rachel Coates, alternating in the role of Henry's son's goth girlfriend.

"Baby and I have come a long way," Faustmann says. "I'm honored to be directed by her. She has a keen eye for perfection. Andres, this being his first play, is a wonderful actor with a fantastic attitude and love for his craft. The Coates sisters are gems to be with!"

As for the play? Sure, it's billed as a comedy--"I love doing comedy!" Faustmann says--but there's more to it than just the scathing banter. And its principal player prefers to throw the question back at the viewer: "How many families are broken today? How many unwed fathers and mothers do we have today?"

Before this piece, I have never written an obituary. Rest in peace, James Reyes. The website version of this article here. (P.S. Some idiot at Inquirer.net couldn't figure out the basics of spacing.)

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Theater colleagues pay tribute to James Reyes--an 'atypical, ego-free artist'

"He was an atypical artist--almost ego-free."

Tanghalang Pilipino (TP) artistic director Fernando "Nanding" Josef is describing award-winning theater costumer and fashion designer James Reyes, who succumbed to an acute cardiac condition in the early hours of Saturday, March 16. He was 48.

Josef recalls, "During meetings with a production's artistic team, he would listen intently and quietly to the discussions, especially between the director and the playwright. Days after, he would just submit his interesting studies, which oftentimes immediately got the approval of his director.

"If his director wanted revisions, [Reyes] would go back to the drawing board with no sign of resistance, and return with even more appropriate designs."

More widely recognized in fashion design, where his "edgy,""conceptual,""out of the box" approach marked him as an innovator, Reyes cofounded the Young Designers Group, and was secretary of the Fashion Design Council of the Philippines (FDCP) at the time of his death.

It was this "out of the box" perspective that Reyes brought to the stage, where his collaborations with TP, the resident theater company of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), spanned almost a decade, in productions ranging from children's shows ("Sandosenang Sapatos," 2013), rap musicals ("Kleptomaniacs," 2014) to Shakespearean adaptations ("A Midsummer Night's Dream/Pangarap sa Isang Gabi ng Gitnang Tag-araw," 2016).

In a Facebook post, Josef referred to him as TP's "'almost resident' costume designer."

One can pick apart the hits and misses in Reyes' body of work, but there's no denying he was an artist who always made the viewer look and think twice: for instance, the Barong Tagalog amid archaic silhouettes in "Ang Pag-uusig" (2017), an adaptation of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible"; or the panoply of blacks and whites that unexpectedly advanced the metaphors in the self-proclaimed rock sarswela "Aurelio Sedisyoso" (2017).

In the Philstage Gawad Buhay Awards for the Performing Arts, Reyes scored three nominations for costume design--one in 2017 for "Aurelio"; and two in 2015, for the steampunk musical "Mabining Mandirigma," and "Juego de Peligro," an adaptation of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." He rightfully took home the trophy for "Mabini."

Playwright Layeta Bucoy, another longtime collaborator, says Reyes found fulfillment in, and was somehow even "addicted" to designing for theater. "Two years ago, he told me he was still in the process of exploring, that he was still learning but loving every moment of [designing for theater]. He fell in love with how the littlest detail in his design would contribute to a play's overall narrative, intentions, vision."

Reyes had just returned from New York, where he visited design laboratories, when work started on Bucoy's 2017 Virgin Labfest entry "Si Dr. Dolly Dalisay at ang Mga Ladybugs."

Bucoy recalls, "He patterned his designs on NY labs. Then I had to remind him, 'James, third world lab.' He said, 'Ay ganon? Akala ko pa naman 'shabby chic.'"

The final Bucoy-Reyes collaboration was last year's "Balag at Angud," an original musical based on the life of protest artist Junyee. And like the show's subject matter, who struggled with the poor reception of his early works, "[James] also went through that phase when he was a youngster, his drawings and sketches were called 'kalat lang,'" Bucoy says. "That's why he identified so much with [the show]."

The two collaborators had plans. "I asked him what would be most challenging to him as a designer, and he said if there'd be minimal props or set pieces onstage. So we agreed to come up with a play with only a pebble onstage," says Bucoy.

A tiny stone for a set would have made quite the punch line to a career that traversed the last 30 years--one that incubated at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, where Reyes obtained his Fine Arts degree; burned up more than a decade in the advertising industry; even breaching the finals of the 2002 Paris Young Designers' Competition; before finally landing on the theater stage.

For now, playgoers will have one more glimpse of Reyes' work, as "Mabini" and "Aurelio" return to the CCP this August for a three-week rerun in repertory.

Reyes' funeral wake is at St. Alphonsus de Ligouri Church, Magallanes Village, Makati City, until Wednesday, March 20.

My second piece for today--a campus theater omnibus!--was written with a March 23 publication date in mind, hence the mentions of "last week" in the piece. I have since corrected the errors. The website version here.

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3 campus shows, and the fearless play you missed

The set of "Kung Paano Maghiwalay."

UP Playwrights' Theatre's "Nana Rosa"--an essential but problematic play--was perhaps the quarter's most visible university-based show, but it wasn't the only one.

'Br. Benilde' (Jan. 23-Feb. 2)

As campus theater is concerned, the year began with the a capella, sort-of-biographical musical "Br. Benilde" at the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde School of Design and Arts Theater. The production was backed by a team of industry pros--Layeta Bucoy as writer, Tuxqs Rutaquio as director, TJ Ramos as composer and musical director, and, save for Natasha Cabrera and Al Gatmaitan (in the titular role), featured a student cast.

"Excessive" was the most appropriate adjective for this production: It was over-scored, over-choreographed, overacted, over-designed. What it lacked was a streamlined, disciplined feel to it, as though what was presented onstage was still a draft version of the real thing.

What stood out, in the end, was the glorious, unamplified singing of the Coro San Benildo, whose members were also part of the ensemble.

'Oedipus' (March 14-15)

At St. Benilde's Taft Avenue campus two weeks ago, a far more brow-raising production took its bow--Dulaang Filipino's "Oedipus," which used Rolando Tinio and Onofre Pagsanjan's translations of the Theban trilogy, but through Riki Benedicto's ministrations, became a 45-minute, movement-heavy condensation.

We recognized this production's global achievements--laurels from theater festivals in Spain, Canada and Belarus, plus an upcoming stint in the Czech Republic next month.

But it's also necessary to question its qualities, as an audience who transcended the visual spectacle it offered and actually understood the language it employed. Truth was, the "Oedipus" we saw was performed with little regard for the script, by actors who seemed not to comprehend the lines they were spewing, in a space with terrible acoustics.

A word of caution, then: Perhaps we should be wary of devised productions such as this "Oedipus," if they inadvertently end up teaching our students that it's somehow acceptable not to tell the story well; not to listen to one's co-actors; not to master the basics of theater performance, so long as one can pull off the show's complicated choreography.

'Kung Paano Maghiwalay' (Feb. 13-March 9)

In stark contrast was the Far Eastern University Theater Guild's "Kung Paano Maghiwalay," the award-winning George de Jesus III play now directed by Dudz Teraña. Here, there was only the script and the actors--and it was interesting, to say the least, seeing a university company handle material that, at first glance, would seem the wrong fit.

Memories of the 2017 Pineapple Lab production were still relatively fresh, most especially the towering performances of Juliene Mendoza and Stella Cañete-Mendoza as the older couple. But Teraña's take on the play instead aimed the spotlight on all the pairs of younger lovers.

The production wasn't always successful. The tonal and thematic shifts between scenes and disparate acting styles could be quite glaring, and the pair who portrayed the older couple was burdened by too much heavy-handed anger in their scenes.

But whenever this production hit its stride, it was a joy to watch--how the student-actors very naturally brought to life their youthful characters. Even better, it figured out the play's inherent comedy, so a delicate back-and-forth between rapture and anguish was more or less ever-present.

Celine Arriola, as the feisty Karla, served that back-and-forth with flair. And Paolo Casiao was a scene-stealing chameleon, playing all the background characters--taxi driver, Starbucks barista, nursing aide, etc.

'Tao Po' (March 14)

Then there was "Tao Po"--included in this roundup for the sole reason that it played a one-off show at the Ateneo de Manila University two weeks ago.

"Tao Po" was no campus theater. It's a Palanca-winning monologue by Maynard Manansala, directed by Ed Lacson Jr. and starring the unflinching Mae Paner (a.k.a. Juana Change). It's been around since 2017, performed on stages from Baguio City to Melbourne, Australia.

"Tao Po" strung four unrelated characters--a photojournalist, a Zumba instructor, a policeman and a grieving girl--who documented, perpetrated, or were victimized, respectively, by Duterte-era extrajudicial killings. And as their stories unfolded, what hit you the hardest was the realization that somehow, these were stories that have been normalized, that--quite troublingly--no longer bore an element of surprise.

Which made the show all the more vital to our times. "Tao Po" was a work of such brutal fearlessness, daring to fight back against the excesses of the Duterte regime, that it went beyond the simple rigors of solo performance.

It was about shedding light anew on stories that people have grown calloused to. It was about empathy, and about mining the limits of what it means to be human in these morally compromised times.

At the end of that performance, the makers issued a call stating that they're open to bringing the play to willing venues. If you're reading this--and have yet to see it, but have the resources to accommodate the show--reach out to them via the "Tao Po Juana Change" Facebook page. As theater is concerned, this is a play that must be seen and heard all across this country--and even beyond.

My only wish is that they replace Andoy for "Perestroika." The website version of this review here.

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'Angels in America' is immensely satisfying theater

How director Bobby Garcia ends his staging of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America: Millennium Approaches" is the very definition of big dick energy--not with a deafening bang, but with drawn curtains that leave the viewer starving for more (a.k.a. "Perestroika," or part two of this two-part "Gay Fantasia on National Themes," as the subtitle goes).

You can say the same thing about the whole production. This "Angels"--Garcia's second stab at the play after premiering it in Manila in 1995--does not go for grand gestures, boom and spectacle. Instead, it pulses, its movements consisting not of breathless beats, but sharp, deliberate strokes intent on dissecting the play's raw, primal core.

It's the kind of dissection that has become Garcia's trump card of late. Across the board, from "The Bridges of Madison County" to "Fun Home" to "Waitress," his productions have been united by an emphatic focus on the text--an honest-to-goodness "tell the story" sensibility that enables his productions to transcend cultural barriers easily.

And so this "Millennium Approaches," where one emerges--three acts, two intermissions and three-and-a-half hours later--strangely invigorated, despite Kushner's cautioning in the script that "an epic play" such as "Angels""should be a little fatiguing."

Forget fatigue

Forget fatigue. "Millennium Approaches" is an immensely satisfying piece of theater. What Garcia serves here is searing drama (with sprinklings of comedy) paced perceptively and incredibly well.

You have to admire, for instance, the way this production skims through jokes and lines that predictably go over the Filipino audience's heads--digs on Jews and Republicans that are otherwise surefire hits on the other side of the globe (check out the filmed version of the marvelous 2017 London National Theatre production, for starters).

Garcia zeroes in on the unfiltered emotions that are the backbone of this play. This is, after all, the interconnected story of two couples at the height of the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York: life and death, sickness and betrayal, history and heaven unraveling.

And if Kushner intends for "Angels" to be "an actor-driven event," Garcia's "Millennium Approaches" is an unqualified success--well, almost.

Sore thumb

The sore thumb in this eight-person play is Andoy Ranay, in the role of the Black drag queen Belize. It is unquestionably a tough role to cast hereabouts, yet, without even invoking the part's physical requirements, Ranay is evidently out of his league here--so out of sync with the play's chop-chop rhythm, to say nothing of his rather wan characterization.

That only means the rest of the cast assembled by Garcia are in top form. The four other men in the play deliver superlative, career-defining performances--Topper Fabregas, alternately fierce and fabulous as Prior Walter, the show's narrative pivot; Nelsito Gomez, a pathetic yet transfixing presence as Prior's lover, Louis; Art Acuña as the diabolical Roy Cohn; and Markki Stroem as the closeted lawyer Joe. (In Stroem's case, it's even more impressive when you consider how persuasively he transports you on his character's entire arc, and realize this is only his first nonmusical stint.)

The three women, juggling nine roles among them, are knockouts in their crucial parts: Cherie Gil as Joe's Mormon mother; Pinky Amador as multiple characters, but especially her near-wordless turn as a hobo; and Angeli Bayani, summoning to astounding, sometimes frightening life Joe's Valium-addicted wife, Harper.

Further stressing Harper's volatility, Garcia even introduces Bayani as a scuttling figure on Faust Peneyra's set--an unobtrusive clutter of desks and lamps seemingly piled atop each other, corralled by imposing gray walls that, as lit by the ever-reliable Jonjon Villareal, cast an old-world, claustrophobic feel.

It's but one of the ingenious bits of stagecraft enlivening this production. (GA Fallarme's projections are another, his evocative visuals crafting settings in seconds.) The other bits, one may understandably harp on--how, for example, the reveal of the titular angel at the end comes off more as underwhelming apparition than earth-crashing revelation.

Such faults are ultimately rendered microscopic by the impeccable whole. Where they matter most, "Millennium Approaches" lands its punches--and my, how it soars.

When one of your favorite and formative musicals gets the treatment it deserves. But really, full circle moment here: In 2009, a few months after moving to Manila for college, I saw my first professional theater production--Atlantis'"Spring Awakening." It's 2019 now. Also, some of you may recall how I wasn't the biggest fan of the 2013 BlueRep "SA." Anyway, here's the website version of my current review. I have so much more to say about this production, but the fucking word count.

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'Spring Awakening': an illuminating, coming-of-age rock musical

Curtain call at the press performance of "Spring Awakening."

The Tony and Olivier Award-winning "Spring Awakening," with music by Duncan Sheik and libretto by Steven Sater, is billed as a "rock musical."

You wouldn't readily know that, however, from director Missy Maramara's revelatory and lucidly mounted production of Ateneo Blue Repertory, six years after the university company's initial shot at the musical.

Set in 19th-century Germany but employing modern, occasionally formal English, "Spring Awakening" revolves around a group of youngsters coming to terms with sexuality in an archaic, repressive society.

The songs, written in the tongue of hormonal adolescents, function as literal outlets for the characters--as audiovisual manifestations of pent-up pubertal rage.

But Maramara (codirecting with Darrell Uy) sidesteps the apparent temptation to turn the musical into a rock concert of sorts. Instead, she has shaped an illuminating "Spring Awakening," whose interests lie less in the juvenile rebellion at hand, and more in the whys and hows that sculpt this rebellion. Less in the turbulent hormones, and more in the deep-seated anxiety spawned by coming of age under iron fists.

Finest ensemble singing

Ejay Yatco's musical direction, for instance, allows little room for roof-rattling belting. He substitutes vocal gymnastics with what sounds like unsullied yearning, an unexplainable bodily hunger put to melody. And more than subtly tweaking parts of the score to marvelous, dramatic effect, he has also whipped into shape the finest ensemble singing by any Filipino university theater company in at least the last decade.

Mica Fajardo's choreography reflects this naivety. The dancing here is a little raw, a little clumsy, but vibrant in the way that fresh, unschooled things are.

It's all in contrast to the design elements--Ohm David's set of ominous, "ruined" wooden panels, Miyo Sta. Maria's lighting and the costumes by Gayle Mendiola and Leika Golez--collectively conjuring this frigid, unforgiving landscape.

But it isn't just the overall picture that reveals this production's grasp of its material. It's also in the little things: How, for example, the blocking insists on always placing upstage, or even on just a slightly raised level, the actors playing the adult characters in the musical (the male parts effectively granted varying degrees of coldness by Angelo Esperanzate).

Or how "The Word of Your Body"--in which the eventual teenage lovers, Melchior and Wendla, try to make sense of this confusing, deepening attraction between them--is staged like some kind of mating ritual dance.

Astute command of feeling

The lovers, by the way, are portrayed by professional actors Sandino Martin and Krystal Kane, respectively--both giving performances with astute command of feeling and character. (In Kane's case, her name is prescient: She acts and sings with a level of crispness and transparency that instantly elevates her to the ranks of the pros.)

The two other notable featured parts are handled by Juancho Gabriel, an electric bundle of nerves and confusion as the tragic Moritz; and Alexa Prats, who delivers a whirlwind performance of astonishing range in her two key scenes as the outcast Ilse.

By the time this production comes around to staging the musical's biggest number--the aptly titled "Totally Fucked," where Melchior arrives at the epiphany that, in his particular world and time, there's no defeating the powers that be--the release is both well-earned and satisfying, performed with a self-aware snigger at the tragic turn of events.

In this exhilarating number--and in many others in this show--you almost forget that this is just a school-based production. Alongside Dulaang UP's "Ang Nawalang Kapatid" and Tanghalang Ateneo's "Middle Finger" and "Kalantiaw," this "Spring Awakening" sets the bar really high to show what mere campus theater can truly achieve.

I did this last year--here! Not sure if I want to keep on doing this every year, so in the meantime, here's the website version of this piece.

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The winningest director, two best actresses and other Gawad Buhay facts

"3 Stars and a Sun," costume design by Gino Gonzales.

Twenty-three trophies are up for grabs at the 11th Philstage Gawad Buhay Awards for the Performing Arts, May 28, at the Onstage Theater, Greenbelt 1, Makati City.

Lutgardo Labad and Felicitas Radaic will receive the Natatanging Gawad Buhay--the lifetime achievement awards--for theater and dance, respectively. Meanwhile, 21 individuals--comprising roughly 40 percent of individual nominations--are up for their first competitive Gawad Buhay.

In anticipation of awards night, here are 11 facts and milestones you may not know about "the first industry awards exclusively for the performing arts":

1. The only time an actor won multiple acting awards in the same year was in 2010, when the late Mario O'Hara took home Male Lead Performance in a Play for the Asian premiere of Lloyd Suh's "American Hwangap" under Tanghalang Pilipino (TP), and Male Featured Performance in a Play for Rody Vera's adaptation of Anton Chekov's "Three Sisters," now "Tatlong Mariya," for the same company.

2. The category with the fewest winners is Outstanding Original Script. It has been awarded only four times, to Tony Perez for "Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?" (2009), Ron Capinding for "William" (2011), Layeta Bucoy for "Doc Resurreccion: Gagamutin ang Bayan" (2012), and Kanakan Balintagos for "Mga Buhay na Apoy" (2015).

Record

3. Only three musicals have brought home the trophies for both Outstanding Original Libretto and Original Musical Composition: Peta's "Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo at ang Limang Milyong Boto" in 2009 (music and libretto by Vincent de Jesus); TP's restaging of "Noli Me Tangere, The Musical" in 2011 (libretto by National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera, music by National Artist for Music Ryan Cayabyab); and TP's "Mabining Mandirigma" in 2015 (libretto by Nicanor Tiongson, music by Joed Balsamo).

4. Ronelson Yadao holds the record for the longest gap between nominations. He scored his first nomination--and win--in 2009 for Male Lead Performance in Dance for Ballet Philippines' (BP) "Neo-Filipino." He landed his second nomination only eight years later, in 2017, for Male Lead Performance in Modern Dance for BP's "Songs of a Wayfarer."

5. Chris Millado has won the most trophies for stage direction--first for TP's "Stageshow" (2012), and then, after the award was split into the play and musical categories, for Repertory Philippines' (Rep) "August: Osage County" in 2014 and TP's "Mabining Mandirigma" the year after. However, the most nominated director is Robbie Guevara, with seven nods to his name and all for musicals produced by 9 Works Theatrical (and, in recent years, Globe Live). Guevara has been nominated every year for the last six years, beginning with "Grease" (2013), followed by "The Last Five Years" (2014), La Cage aux Folles" (2015), "Tick, Tick... Boom!" and "American Idiot" (2016), "Newsies" (2017)--for which he won--and now for "Eto Na! Musikal nAPO!" Bart Guingona, on the other hand, holds the record for the most nominations for direction of nonmusical work. His six nods include two pieces for Rep--"Almost, Maine" (2016) and "Agnes of God" (2017)--and four pieces under The Necessary Theatre by Actor's Actors, Inc.--"Red" (2013), "Venus in Fur" and "Full Gallop" (2014), and his winning work for "The Normal Heart" (2016).

Design

6. Only twice have the four design categories gone to four different productions. In 2013, the winners were: Mio Infante (set design, "The Bluebird of Happiness"), Jolu Escano (lighting design, "Red"), Leeroy New (costume design, "Ibalong") and TJ Ramos (sound design, "Der Kaufmann: Ang Negosyante ng Venecia"). Infante again took home the award for set design in 2016 for "American Idiot"; the other winners that year were John Batalla (lighting design, "Almost, Maine"), Gino Gonzales (costume design, "3 Stars and a Sun") and Teresa Barrozo (sound design, "Tribes").

7. Only twice have Outstanding Ensemble for a Play and for a Musical gone to the same company: first in 2011, when Peta scooped those awards for "William" and "Care Divas"; then, the following year, when TP's "Walang Kukurap" and "Stageshow" prevailed.

8. Only two individuals have received multiple Gawad Buhays for two consecutive years. Vincent de Jesus achieved this feat first by winning Outstanding Libretto for "Skin Deep" and Outstanding Musical Direction for "Batang Rizal" in 2008, and then for his libretto and original music for "Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo at ang Limang Milyong Boto" in 2009. The late National Artist for Theater and Design Salvador Bernal was the second to pull this off, winning for his sets and costumes for "Encantada" in 2011 and "Rama, Hari" in 2012.

9. In theater, only two individuals have won the same award for three consecutive years. Sound designer TJ Ramos triumphed in his category for "Encantada" (2011), "Stageshow" (2012) and "Der Kaufmann" (2013). He won a fourth time in that category for "Mabining Mandirigma" (2015) to become the Gawad Buhay's most awarded sound designer. On the other hand, John Batalla--with five wins, the Gawad Buhay's most laureled lighting designer--first had a back-to-back streak with "Equus" (2010) and "Encantada" (2011), before going on to win for "33 Variations" (2015), "Almost, Maine" (2016) and "Agnes of God" (2017).

10. Only once have two individuals tied for their work in the same production--in 2014, when Liesl Batucan and Tami Monsod both won Featured Actress in a Play for playing sisters in the Philippine premiere of Tracy Letts'"August: Osage County" under Rep.

11. Real-life siblings triumphed in the 2012 choreography categories, when the sisters Alice and Denisa Reyes took home the awards for dance (for "Rama, Hari") and theater (for "Stageshow"), respectively. The latter would go on to win the same trophy three years later for "Mabining Mandirigma"; the former, a National Artist for Dance, has one other Gawad Buhay--for her adaptation of Nick Joaquin's "The Summer Solstice," now "Amada" for the ballet stage. Meanwhile, the youngest Reyes sister, Edna Vida, is one of the Gawad Buhay's two most laureled choreographers. Her three wins--a record tied by Carlo Pacis--were for "Banaag at Sikat" (2010) and "Peter Pan" (2010 and 2015). Her fourth competitive Gawad Buhay was for Female Featured Performance in Modern Dance for "Awitin Mo at Isasayaw Ko" (2016).

I have an omnibus review in today's paper--here. How many of us were there during "Red"? Ten, 12, maybe? And three of those were already the Ateneo Fine Arts triumvirate of Glenn Mas, Guelan Luarca and Charles Yee.

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'Makinal' and 'Red': Student theses-plays that rate full points

The set of "Red."

In the pre-Holy Week stretch, Katski Flores (in Tanghalang Ateneo's "Alpha Kappa Omega") wasn't the only actress bringing the house down with a brief but explosive featured performance.

Karen Romualdez gave a similar ephemeral, force-of-nature turn, in a one-weekend-only thesis production of Sophie Treadwell's "Machinal," now "Makinal" for UP Dulaang Laboratoryo through the prolific Eljay Castro Deldoc's adaptation.

In her singular scene early in the play as the female protagonist's mother, Romualdez sharply laid out a life of frustration and resentment through an expert blend of anger and comedy, her toxic, nonstop verbal barrage calling to mind Mona Lisa's titanic performance in the classic Lino Brocka film "Insiang."

This was the decibel level adopted by the rest of the production, a kind of assault-on-all-senses that furthered its depiction of wretched womanhood and female repression. This unrest was expressionistic, sure, but it could also get literally distracting and overwhelming.

So, for instance, you had Rachel Jacob as the female protagonist--her capable, if unexciting take on a difficult and potentially unexciting role sometimes getting drowned in the action, and all but swallowed whole by her onstage mother in that key scene.

Jacob fared better in her scenes with Jack Yabut, appropriately slimy as the supervisor who lusts after and marries her character; and with Vincent Pajara, bringing an electric freshness as the young man who leads her down an adulterous path.

Vibrant energy

But what really stuck with you to the end was Nour Hooshmand's direction--how she injected this production with vibrant (if occasionally uneven) energy, how her command of feeling and sense of theatrical style allowed this play about people living like machines an ebb-and-flow that still sustained the viewer's attention.

Much of what was stylish and theatrical about "Machinal" came from Steven Tansiongco's projections--whether they be a play of cubist graphics on otherwise plain wall posts or a splatter of blood on white cloth, the red seemingly washing over the stage. Splashy as his designs were, they never overwhelmed the text; they even heightened the grim, immersive atmosphere.

Atmosphere was also what the thesis production of John Logan's "Red" at the Ateneo de Manila University earlier this week got right.

Perfect setting

The production, the directing thesis of Avery Nazareno, had, for starters, the inadvertent perfect setting--the university's old Black Box Theater, which was believably designed by Ohm David and Leo Rialp to look like a skeletal studio, with its easels and paint cans and unfinished overall appearance.

The play, which imagines the painter Mark Rothko's time working on the Seagram Murals in the late 1950s, was locally premiered in 2013 by The Necessary Theatre, in a "first-rate treatment [anchored by] the crackerjack tandem of Bart Guingona [as Rothko] and Joaquin Valdes as his (fictional) apprentice," as former Inquirer Theater editor Gibbs Cadiz wrote in his year-end roundup that year.

Nazareno's "Red" not only survived comparison with that production; in some way, it even bettered it.

Sure, this new production lacked a worthy opponent for Rothko to verbally spar with: André Miguel's portrayal of the apprentice, Ken, came across as too insolent and detached for any serious painter to even take seriously.

But it also had a sense of intellectual calm and rigor about it that wasn't very evident in the 2013 staging. (That one felt consumed by high emotion and sometimes bordered on the polemical, not that those qualities diminished the experience in any way.)

Nazareno's "Red" knew to take its time--to land appropriate pauses and allow the hyper-intellectual conversations room to breathe. You weren't just watching a pair of brains at work; you were also doing the thinking alongside them.

The great injustice of this production was that very few people saw Rialp in the role of Rothko. Because his was a performance for the books--intelligently layered, commanding in its sobriety, a believable balance of wisdom and self-doubt that must plague many an aging artist. Rialp himself is a painter in real life, which must partly explain the effortlessness of his characterization; to see and hear him in the role was like watching a master at work--the cadences, and especially the comedy, down pat.

In hindsight, a lot of this production's success had to do with Rialp's professional touch. But it's also important to remember that "Red" was first and foremost a student thesis. Like "Makinal," it was mounted with a limited budget, raw skill and only the guidance of its program's professors.

That both challenging plays were honestly more satisfying experiences than some of the full-blown, professional productions we've had this year should be reason enough to earn those involved in them top marks.

I honestly had lots of fun writing this for-theater-nerds advancer feature. The website version here.

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'The Dresser' brings three theater stalwarts together for the first time

At the Peta Theater Center in 2012, Nonon Padilla directed a production of "King Lear," now "Haring Lear" through "brilliant, exceptionally vivid Filipino prose by National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera," wrote former Inquirer Theater editor Gibbs Cadiz. The titular role--a "sonorously voiced, charismatic [and] highly physical" interpretation, to go by Cadiz's review--was played by Teroy Guzman.

Guzman now finds himself taking another stab at Lear. This time, however, he's playing an actor playing Lear--in Loy Arcenas' production of Ronald Harwood's "The Dresser," which opened last night as Repertory Philippines' (Rep) third production for the year.

Set in the backstage of an English theater in World War II, "The Dresser" chiefly revolves around the relationship between an aging actor, referred to only as Sir, and his personal assistant, Norman. The story takes place in the course of an evening, where Sir, plagued by senility, if not dementia, struggles to get through a performance of "Lear."

Debuts for Rep

In this Rep production, Norman is played by Audie Gemora, who returns to the 52-year-old company after his Gawad Buhay-winning turn as the flamboyant director Roger de Bris in 2013's "The Producers." And with both Guzman and Arcenas making their acting and directorial debuts, respectively, for Rep, "The Dresser" marks the first time the three stalwarts of Filipino theater are working together.

Gemora was actually the one who recommended the play to Arcenas, when the latter directed the former in Tanghalang Pilipino's (TP) "Eurydice" in early 2017. By then, Arcenas had been back in the country for a good six years, having spent most of his working life as a New York-based director and designer, and was only about to release his biggest film to date--the Metro Manila Film Festival Best Picture "Ang Larawan," his cinematic take on the musical adaptation of Nick Joaquin's "A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino."

"Loy put a lot of value in studying the book [for 'The Dresser']," Gemora says. "A lot of time was spent dissecting the script and the characters. It's a tedious process which led to intimidating photo-finish run-throughs, but by opening night, the cast was good and ready."

"At first it was a bit confusing," Guzman says of Arcenas' process, "but when I slowly deciphered things, I began to figure out where he was coming from. He took the time to sit down and discuss the character with me throughout the rehearsal process."

It was only a year before "Eurydice" when Gemora and Guzman appeared in the same production for the first time, playing Oberon and Theseus, respectively, in TP's "Pangarap sa Isang Gabi ng Gitnang Tag-araw," a Filipino adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" using the late National Artist for Theater and Literature Rolando Tinio's translation.

Intrigued

"I first saw Teroy in Red Turnip Theater's "33 Variations," says Gemora, referring to the 2015 production that won Guzman his first Gawad Buhay Award for Featured Actor in a Play for his turn as a fictionalized version of the composer Beethoven--"Lear minus the bitterness and cosmic rage," wrote former reviewer Exie Abola of that performance.

Gemora continues: "I was so intrigued by him. I remember commenting, 'Who is that guy and where did he come from?' He's been in the theater for about as long as I've been, yet our paths never crossed because he acted mostly in UP [Diliman] while everything I did was down south."

"Tita Joy [Virata, Rep's associate artistic director] called me last year and asked if I would play the title role [in 'The Dresser']. When Tita Baby [Barredo, Rep's artistic director] asked who could possibly play Sir, I threw in [Guzman's] name."

Guzman, of course, is no stranger to titanic roles. Apart from Lear, he has also essayed Othello (for Tanghalang Ateneo in 2008); Richard III--the first time under Dulaang UP back in 2000, where he met his wife, Shakespearean scholar Dr. Judy Ick, and again last year, in a Duterte-era adaptation titled "RD3RD"; and Macbeth, for World Theatre Project's "Screen: Macbeth," opposite Ick as Lady Macbeth.

"Sometime ago, I was offered to do ['The Dresser'] with a university company," Guzman says. "But that didn't push through, so I'm very lucky to get another chance to do this."

"'The Dresser' is all about the relationship between the two main characters," Gemora says, "so it is so crucial for Teroy and I to establish rapport between Sir and Norman. It's like a ping-pong match. I am yin to his yang."

I have to say, the thesis season this year has been quite wonderful. My latest say on the matter, via the Inquirer website, here.

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Ambitious student theater performances from FEU, UP, Ateneo

The aftermath of "Marat/Sade."

The past weekend of theatergoing can be summed up by the words of the esteemed playwright Glenn Sevilla Mas, who, in an exclusive interview last year, had this to say about the state of Filipino theater: "The future is bright because the future is here."

Take, for instance, Far Eastern University Theater Guild's "Saltik," a collection of eight one-act plays, many written by student-members of the company and all of them directed by Dudz Teraña.

The production as a whole commits the rookie mistake of equating noise with emotion, and some of the plays can get quite derivative and gimmicky. All understandable: The show, after all, is billed as a lab, meaning it is the proper, if not the only, place for such faults.

It is also an ideal place to push boundaries, which is exactly what "Saltik" surprisingly does. For example, Marielle Barrios'"Daungan," despite being in need of much tightening, manages to give the classic father-and-son tandem a welcome speculative-fiction twist.

Hanna Pelobello's psychodrama "Rachel" is a display of bravura staging, as Teraña anthropomorphizes the various voices and past lives inhabiting the disturbed titular character's head.

The best of the lot is "Proposal," a Bisaya monologue written by Teraña himself (and here, one suspects it's a case of the director knowing exactly what to do with the material). Mapping out the rise and violent decline of a relationship from the woman's point of view, the play is told with admirable clarity, largely thanks to Karyl Oliva, in a flat-out delightful performance.

'G/irl/'

At the Ateneo de Manila University, another monologue gave birth to a star: Maia Dapul in "Unperfect," a devised performance piece directed by Jerry Respeto that culled existing songs from the likes of "Next to Normal,""Kung Paano Ako Naging Leading Lady" and "Real-Life Fairytales."

It was essentially a skeletal rendering of a woman's life from womb to tragic tomb, a musical exploration on the damage wrought by being brought up under the concept of perfection and having that concept somehow taken away later on.

The piece itself stood out for its economy of words, its translation to the stage acquiring a sort of poetic quality, as well as for the way it reinterpreted the selected songs to fit its female-centric narrative. Dapul was a blazing, transfixing presence, her delineations of character and setting clear-cut, her performance a fiery announcement of a serious new entrant to the world of musical theater.

"Unperfect" was one of two thesis plays lumped together under the twin bill titled "G/irl/." The other was "A Doll Life"--the more ambitious but less focused piece--starring Alyssa Jamille Binay, Senanda Gomez and Chrisse Joy delos Santos (with further input for the play from Iman Ampatuan).

The feminism was more accessible in "A Doll Life," where the trio of student-actresses played dolls that somehow come to life (or something akin to it). But the play, in extensively critiquing women's roles in society, also involved a lot of sidetracking and fun but unnecessary banter.

It was strongest--both in terms of writing and performance--when it reached its culminating monologues, which allowed the actresses to be their own persons and enchantingly deliver their respective texts.

'Marat/Sade'

The pinnacle of ambitious student theater, however, was unquestionably UP Dulaang Laboratoryo's "Marat/Sade," the Tony Award-winning Peter Weiss play now translated by Gio Potes and Guelan Luarca to become "Ang Pag-uusig at Pagpaslang kay Jean-Paul Marat Ayon sa Pagkakatanghal ng Mga Pasyente ng Asilo ng Charenton sa Ilalim ng Direksyon ni Marquis de Sade."

On several levels, the play was a challenge: Its dialogue was laced with cerebral polemics on matters such as revolution and class struggle; and its play-within-a-play setup required a cast that could pull off playing asylum inmates struggling to play relatively sane people.

It also had to be staged in a way that combined elaborate, period-drama flamboyance with low-key horror-house theatrics, while somehow making the intellectual back-and-forth less esoteric for the viewer.

None of which the production, directed by Joy Cerro, surmounted unequivocally. And because this was a play that, when steered inadequately, became even more perplexing, it was obvious to the viewer whenever the production sagged.

That also means that whenever the production soared, it was enthralling sight to behold. It knew horror and gore better than the other dramatic elements, and that translated to the staging and the acting, such as that scene when the seams between reality and make-believe first gave way, or in that horrific denouement.

The only ones among the cast who were believable asylum patients were Xander Soriano (commanding as Marat chained to a bathtub), Sheryll Ceasico (her affectless, almost-wordless turn a lesson on consistency) and Hariette Damole (incandescent, gripping, almost pitiful as the unfortunate, internally splintered soul tasked to play the murderous Charlotte Corday; an acting thesis that clearly deserved a 1.0).

The inadvertent runaway star of "Marat/Sade," however, was Adrianna Agcaoili. As the bourgeois hospital director's wife, she had zero lines, but her face was worth a thousand GIFs. And if the students learned a thing or two from her about silently running the show from the sidelines, that could only be for the better.

After all, for these theater kids, the real show's just getting started.

Today, I make my Inquirer-Opinion debut! The website version here.

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Nice

Days before the midterm elections, the worst kind of pictures popped up in my Facebook feed: this lady I knew relatively well, posing with her grown children, all of them sporting gray shirts imprinted with the face of that Davaoeño ex-cop with dramatic proclivities. By now, said ex-cop is set to join the Senate, if we go by the Commission on Elections' count, and that Facebook friend is off gallivanting in some European capital.

It was very tempting to comment on that post; I was thinking something short and sweet, like "why"--lowercase and unpunctuated for a touch of genteel curiosity. But after verbalizing the idea, I was told, as I'd been told many times before, to "be nice." Was it really worth the trouble--this vaguely aggressive comment and the arguments it would conceivably entail, the feathers it would ruffle?

As that trending Twitter photo proclaimed, "It's just politics. Don't let our political preferences destroy friendships and relationships."

Sure thing. Social media, after all, is just one huge echo chamber, full of paid trolls, manicured profiles and like-minded people following and preaching to each other. Beyond our screens, we have real lives to lead and real people to interact with. And being nice--which, in our patriarchy- and hierarchy-obsessed society, often translates to smiling pretty, staying silent and bottling up one's political feelings in favor of preserving the peace--has always come in handy.

They didn't give out medals for the "most polite" kids back in kindergarten for nothing. It's simply the way we're conditioned: grandparents doting on grandchildren who are "obedient"; parents handing out easy rewards for "doing what we say without question." And for the grownups, being nice sweetens the parties we throw, expands our businesses through newfound acquaintances, and flavors random incidents with a more palatable taste for the purposes of memory. Why bother rocking the boat of shallow, civil conversation?

I'm neither parent nor aspiring New-Age life coach, but it's a mistake to confuse nice with nonconfrontational. Only a fool would think collective, courteous silence has ever helped anyone.

Nice gets you children who grow up to become adults bereft of the ability to engage in intelligent, insightful discussion on politics, religion or any other "sensitive" subject--or worse, adults who think discussing such matters in places other than the classroom is at the very least inappropriate, the doings of a party pooper.

Nice means making excuses for those friends or family members who openly and vocally support the government's "war on drugs" (after three years, it's amazing how some people still buy this story), thinking, well, there's more to these persons than just their morals or stand on socioeconomic issues; that anyway, they have raised loving families and have known yours for the longest time--plus bonus points for being devout churchgoers--so they must certainly be better people than their poorly crafted Facebook posts make them out to be.

Nice means just keeping quiet and walking away after an elderly relative tells you he's not voting for Samira Gutoc because--and I kid you not--"she's a loud woman," and that Neri Colmenares is a "threat to businessmen," which makes sense only in the context of said relative, who happens to be richer than probably half the people in your hometown combined.

The ending, of course, is that nice helps get elected to the Senate people like that Davaoeño ex-cop, or that photobombing former aide to the President, who, it should go without saying, is all sorts of unqualified.

In some way, this must feel kind of a reach--to say that our individual upbringing is the reason we now have plundering actors, fanatical boxers and theatrical policemen to write the laws of the land. But grand, disastrous endings can somehow all be traced back to the subliminal cracks at the beginning, to minds tenderly kept shut and mouths demurely kept closed.

So while majority of Filipinos, the ones who don't have the luxury to care about "Avengers: Endgame" or "Game of Thrones," eke out a living on a day-to-day basis, the privileged few--the ones with access and the linguistic faculty to read this piece--continue to be nice to each other. There's always church for our weekly dose of thanksgiving and social media for the occasional, intellectual rant.

Maybe what we need is some plain, blunt thinking to reflect on what the American master composer Stephen Sondheim wrote: Nice is different than good.

Any Floy Quintos play is an event. The website version here.

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Floy Quintos''Laro' kick-starts Pride Month at Arts Above

Pride Month at Arts Above? That's the idea behind Artist Playground's (AP) programming for June--well, sort of.

"There was this group that planned to put up a pink theater festival, and the organizers wanted AP to host," says artistic director Roeder Camañag. "But for some reason, this is no longer pushing through."

Enter Floy Quintos'"Laro," an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's "La Ronde," which consists of 10 interlocking, amorous vignettes set in late-19th-century Vienna.

Quintos' version, however, transports the story to present-day Manila and turns all the characters into male homosexuals.

"A bracing meditation on identity, longing and survival" was how Gibbs Cadiz, Inquirer's theater critic at the time, described "Laro" in his review of the play's premiere more than 14 years ago. Among other things, that production, directed by the playwright himself, was defined by "dialogue that's remarkable for its clarity as for its casual, if bitter, truth," exposing the "small but volcanically complex gay society [as a place where], for all its surface urban freedom, tribal passions still reign and the terrain of kindred connections often feels like a battlefield."

Same struggles

For John Mark Yap, director of AP's "Laro," that terrain has remained more or less the same. "It's quite alarming, to be honest, that the gay community is still experiencing the same challenges and struggles from more than a decade ago. The issues discussed in the play such as sexual predation and power play are still very prevalent."

Staging the play is a wish fulfilled for Yap, who was still a minor when "Laro" premiered in late 2004. "I played the role of the Young Gentleman when Tanghalang Ateneo staged "La Ronde" in 2010," he says. But he only got to read Quintos' adaptation in 2014, when he served as project manager for the book launch of the playwright's two-volume collection of plays.

"I first worked with AP in 2016 as a graphics designer, and in one of our encounters, Paul Jake Paule and Sir Roeder said I should direct for their company. I was honestly very hesitant since I'm more known in the industry as a stage manager, and it was only last year when I told them I was finally accepting the challenge of directing."

For "Laro," Yap has assembled, through personal invitation, what he calls "an all-star cast"--a mix of stage veterans such as the multihyphenate Vincent de Jesus and Phi Palmos, and relatively fresh products of the campus theater circuit like Jon Abella and Vincent Pajara.

The creative team includes Io Balanon (sets), Nicolo Perez (costumes), Miggy Panganiban (lights), Arvy Dimaculangan (sound), JM Cabling (movement) and Gian Nicdao (graphics).

Following "Laro's" two-weekend run, AP will stage "Roses for Ben," which the company bills as the first HIV-awareness gay musical in the country, with Camañag directing.

"'Laro' should serve as a prelude to 'Roses for Ben,'" Yap says. "June is Pride Month so it's definitely the best time to stage these plays about the gay community."

Let me say it again: Any Floy Quintos play is an event. He says he's done writing new plays, but let's all pray he changes his mind. The website version of this review here. (I was supposed to review the original run last year, but appendicitis happened.)

* * * * *

'Kundiman Party': Keep fighting the good fight, no matter the odds

Curtain call at "The Kundiman Party."

Eleven o'clock numbers (the theater term for a show-stopping song late in the second act) apply only to musical theater, but the penultimate scene in Floy Quintos'"The Kundiman Party" now feels like one.

In that scene, the dishonorable senator Juancho Valderrama finally comes face-to-face with his estranged son, Bobby, who has taken the opposite path as a voice of the resistance movement.

That scene was already dramatically satisfying during the play's premiere at the University of the Philippines-Diliman last year, with Kalil Almonte as Bobby going against an appropriately slimy Teroy Guzman--the rebel standing up to the ruler.

This time, Nonie Buencamino plays the senator, and Boo Gabunada is Bobby--and what they bring to the show is an electric, more familial dynamic.

Gabunada's Bobby is angrier, louder, more kinetic--a child prematurely molded by the harsh streets to become the fighter that he is. Beneath that facade of the woke millennial is a boy who learned to survive on his own. It's a character arc conveyed so convincingly, that by the time Buencamino enters the fray, all of Bobby's strident aggression makes perfect sense.

What surprisingly surfaces is a long-dormant father-and-son relationship.

Buencamino's senator somehow reveals a caring parent underneath that veneer of calculated evil. And yet, his performance is made all the more delectable by its ambiguity: Is he really a caring father more than he is a politician, or is he just being a politician and fooling us all?

What's left unspoken

It's astonishing how that singular scene is steered by what the characters leave largely unspoken--the years of absence and repressed hurt finally taking control of the situation.

When Buencamino's senator tells his son to go to the mountains because that's where the real battle is--even though "I may lose you, anak"--you know that Gabunada's Bobby might very well do just that, if only to perform the ultimate act of rebellion.

And then it dawns on you that somehow, Bobby is now all of us--the ones who hoped for a tide of genuine change in the recently concluded midterm elections, and saw that hope annihilated; the ones who have carved their own corner in social media, helping fight the noble fight, and still got duped by the powers-that-be.

Last year, "The Kundiman Party" came across as self-reflection for the nation, asking, as reviewer Arturo Hilado wrote for this paper, "Fight or flight? Struggle or acquiescence?"

Now, three years into the Duterte administration and with the return to the Senate of some of the biggest thieves, those questions no longer await our individual answers so much as demand them.

The rest of the company are still in topflight form. Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino's portrait of the songstress Adela, in whose home the story unfolds, remains a masterful creation of the stage; her accent alone, littered with subtle hints of one who feels alien to both Filipino and foreign tongues, works wonders in the storytelling.

But when the senator proclaims to Adela that "we are building a new nation," it's hard not to feel the make-believe giving way to reality. This time around, "The Kundiman Party" isn't just telling us to "resist" from the comforts of our echo chambers; it's already imploring us to keep fighting the good fight despite the miserable odds.

One fine day for something new in Inquirer-Theater--the website version here. (We should more roundtable-ish piece, I think.)

* * * * *

Carole King musical: A 'Beautiful' celebration of the empowered woman

Only two shows from the 2013-2014 season are still running on Broadway: Disney's "Aladdin," and the jukebox musical "Beautiful," which uses the songs of Carole king to dramatize her early career, up to the recording of her global bestseller "Tapestry." By next week, Atlantis Theatrical Entertainment Group will have premiered both musicals in the Philippines.

"Beautiful" reunites director Bobby Garcia with Kayla Rivera, who played Princess Jasmine when Atlantis staged the first non-American production of "Aladdin" in 2012 (preceding the show's Broadway bow by more than a year).

Ahead of "Beautiful's" June 14 opening, we talked with Rivera and the other eight women in the cast about King's influence in their artistic lives and what it means--and takes--to be a woman today. (The roles the women are playing are indicated in parentheses.)

Here are edited excerpts from our e-mail exchanges:

Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante (Cynthia Weil): I grew up listening to Carole King. My parents were big fans of hers: "Tapestry" was on constant rotation in our record player, and my mom and I would even jam to "It's Too Late" on the family piano.

Jill Peña (Janelle Woods/Shirelle): "It's Too Late" was a regular in my family's playlist back when the videoke era was in full swing. I was so obsessed with it, I composed a ringtone on my tita's Nokia 3210. Then, at my first-ever singing competition in college, I sang "Natural Woman."

Kayla Rivera (Carole King): At a talent showcase in Calgary, Canada, where I was born and raised, I heard a friend sing "Natural Woman." Right away, I was hooked. I went home and started listening to Aretha Franklin's version. From then on, it was the song I'd always be excited to perform, even if I couldn't relate to the lyrics. My mom would tell me to sing more age-appropriate songs, but I'd insist on singing it.

Maronne Cruz (Betty): King's songs have a pervasive way of hitting the heart, even when they've been passed on and loved by generations of musicians, and reinterpreted in different ways. "Chains" by The Beatles, "Natural Woman" by Franklin, "I Feel the Earth Move" by Mandy Moore. The first two were impossible not to grow up with. The latter, I found in Moore's "Coverage" album, which is an album full of covers (go figure!).

Teetin Villanueva (Little Eva/Shirelle): Growing up, I would hear [King's] songs, like "It's Too Late" and "Natural Woman," on the radio. I learned "You've Got a Friend" for a voice class when I was in grade school, and back then, I didn't know anything about King. I was pleasantly surprised to discover she cowrote "The Loco-Motion"--I honestly had no idea!

Alex Reyes (ensemble): It was like a light-bulb moment for me when I saw "Beautiful" on Broadway in 2017/ I was surprised by how many of King's songs I'd grown familiar with as a child. "Ah! She wrote that!"

Gabby Padilla (ensemble): [In "Beautiful"], not only are we celebrating King as an artist, but also King as a woman who comes into her own and finds her own voice. We forget how lucky we are to live in a time when women can pursue their dreams without question (well, for the most part).

Bradshaw-Volante: What audiences need to understand is that when King started, the music industry was predominantly run by men.

Villanueva: Back then, women were expected to become teachers or housewives. King broke those stereotypes.

Gab Pangilinan (Marilyn Wald/Shirelle): She paved the way for more female artists [see: The Shirelles!] and served as a representation of an empowered woman.

Bradshaw-Volante: [But] as much as times have changed for the better, there is still immense pressure on women. You're expected to juggle motherhood, careers, relationships--all while maintaining a tiny waistline. I don't think a lot of men realize that women wake up and charge into battle every day. This perfect contour and lipstick isn't just makeup; it's war paint.

Padilla: Oftentimes, women shrink or compromise themselves to accommodate people or relationships because we think that's all we deserve. We're so apologetic for the space we take up.

Bradshaw-Volante: "Beautiful" [celebrates] the bravery and strength required to be a woman, so you need a cast of fierce females who are up to the task.

Peña: I don't think I've cried this many times during a rehearsal period! It's like daily catharsis; the show just makes its way into your soul, and everyone comes out of it better than when she started.

Cruz: One thing I enjoy about more female-centric narratives is how they expose the different stories that women face and the different facets of femininity. Working on shows with strong female characters and cast mates always feels like my own form of activism.

Rivera: Another female-centric narrative that I was part of was "Side Show" [last year]. But that was different in that the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton had suppressed voices and were taken advantage of throughout their lives. To see "Beautiful" shed light on a woman being triumphant in a profound way leaves us with a sense of empowerment.

Pangilinan: ["Side Show"] was my first time in an Atlantis production, with Kayla [as Daisy].

Villanueva: This is my sixth Atlantis production as part of the cast, and third as Cecile Martinez's assistant choreographer, [but] I think it's the first time that majority of the cast are millennials. I'm used to being at the rehearsal venue one to one-and-a-half hours before call time, and it's refreshing to see I'm not the only one who is extra early. When we were still in the process of cleaning choreography... I remember seeing Direk Bobby arrive with a surprised look on his face because it looked like rehearsals were already ongoing.

Cruz: Bobby does a lot of bonding games and workshops for the cast in general. He's constantly verbally uplifting the women... and reminding us of our strengths that we often take for granted.

Carla Guevara-Laforteza (Genie Klein): I'm grateful to Bobby for entrusting me with this role, because this is the first show I'm doing for Atlantis where I barely sing. It's like doing a straight play. There are a lot of musicals I've been part of that had strong women characters a the center--"Miss Saigon,""Song and Dance,""Nine"--and it's not any different from working on a show where the man is the lead. You give the same effort and deliver the same level of performance quality to each show. When I was starting [in theater], there were only three of us in my batch in Repertory Philippines who were being groomed to be future leading ladies (the others were Sheila Valderrama-Martinez and Maya Barredo), so we had the advantage of being personally trained by our mentors Bibot Amador and Baby Barredo. I can't say it's easier now [for women in theater], but consistency is key. You are only as good as your last performance.

My God, what a train wreck. Dotnet version of my review here.

* * * * *

'Roses for Ben': This version is not what audiences need to see

There is not only an artistic responsibility, but also a moral one, that comes with staging plays of urgent sociopolitical importance--the likes of "The Normal Heart" and "Angels in America," both of which deal with the HIV-AIDS crisis in profoundly illuminating ways.

Viewed through this lens, Artist Playground's "Roses for Ben"--with book and lyrics by Rayne Jarabo, music by Jesse Lucas and direction by Roeder Camañag--gives little cause for celebration.

Carelessly written

Put simply, this original Filipino musical about a gender-fluid man who discovers he has HIV is carelessly written, poorly thought-out and ineptly staged.

The musical has been marketed as an HIV-awareness play. Yet it either treats its most crucial scenes in an undignified manner or shies away from harnessing completely the dramatic truths of those moments.

The climactic scene between Ben and his father, when son finally opens up to parent about his condition, is treated almost as an afterthought. A scene set in a clinic portrays the nurse and HIV counselor as an idiot who believes the virus can be contracted from fish and an over-the-top comedic punching bag, respectively--the very antithesis to this play's pedagogical mission.

There is even a disposable song number devoted to a supporting character expounding on a rumor about someone having the virus--a rumor that the audience is expected to substitute for the truth.

Instead, this musical gives more weight to scenes and characters that do not advance the story or have no place in the fictive world whatsoever--stagnant song numbers and supporting roles whose contributions to the plot are inversely proportional to their stage time.

Which is to say, the skill involved here is very rudimentary, as if this musical's idea of a musical is song number after song number interspersed between book scenes at an exhausting rate.

And the staging does nothing to elevate the text: The actors all perform in different volumes, styles and rhythms, while the scenes are allowed to progress at their own pace.

So many more questions need answering: Why does this story seem not to care enough about its female lead to give her both a proper buildup and resolution?

Why hasn't anybody bothered tweaking those notes that Bobby Martino, as Ben's father, can't hit in his 11 o'clock number?

Maybe we'd be more forgiving if "Roses for Ben," this hatchling of a musical, were about some other topic. But the latest data from the Department of Health reveal the severity of the HIV-AIDS crisis in the country: 38 new infections every day. Now is not the time to be fooling around.

There's no denying the benevolent intent of this piece. But serious reconsideration and rewriting are warranted, especially if, as the producers have earlier said, this musical were to be toured around the country. Right now, what's certain is that this version of "Roses for Ben" is not the one audiences need to see.

To date, Aicelle Santos has essayed only five roles in the theater--teenage Katy, Aileen, Perla in "Maynila," Gigi and Elsa. The website version of my interview here.

* * * * *

Aicelle Santos: Back to flooded Venezia from war-torn Saigon

"Himala, Isang Musikal," February-March 2018.

From flooded Barangay Venezia to war-torn Saigon, and back.

Such has been the theatrical journey of Aicelle Santos, who has returned to the country after a yearlong stint in the 2017-2019 European touring production of "Miss Saigon," where she played jaded bar girl Gigi.

Now she's set to reprise the role she originated in Philippine Educational Theater Association's (Peta) "Rak of Aegis"--that of Aileen, who puts fictional Venezia on the world's radar after a video of her belting out "Basang-basa sa Ulan" goes viral--for the jukebox musical's sixth rerun, beginning July 5.

"When I got the news that 'Rak' was coming back, and Peta called, I immediately said yes," Santos says. "My first musical was 'Katy' [Spotlight Artists Centre, 2013], and the reason I have 'Rak' is because the 'Rak' people saw me in 'Katy.''Rak' opened a lot of doors for me. It gave me a different level of confidence."

Besides, Santos says, "'Rak' is family, especially offstage. Once you sit at Peta's dining table, you won't want to go home anymore."

Before "Saigon,""Rak's" three-month run in 2016 was already the longest production Santos had been part of--and "that wasn't even every day," she says.

Good training

"So the 'Miss Saigon' tour was really good training. We did eight shows a week and only had one day-off per week. The challenge was how to keep the performance fresh. And you do that by researching again and again, by becoming more observant of the people around you. It's more an actor's work."

More so with playing Aileen in "Rak," which Santos has done since the show's 2014 premiere. "I don't know if I can still portray a 19-year-old after this season [but] I'm actually excited on how I will interpret the role now. After a tour, musicians say, you come back a different person. I understand that now in some way."

Shortly after joining "Saigon," Santos was diagnosed with chondromalacia--the thinning of the cartilage in the bones of the knees. "It's because my physical activities in Europe were different. I was constantly walking, going up and down the stairs, plus the dance training. Here in the Philippines, we're used to having cars. We're not used to walking. Nagulat 'yung muscles ko.

"Apparently, it's the common injury among 'Saigoners.' Since the cartilage is thin, the bones rub against each other. Whenever I moved, it was painful. I had to really rest and rehabilitate for one month. I had to be injected with steroids to numb the pain, so I could do strengthening exercises for the leg [the recommended treatment in the absence of cartilage damage]. Wala pala akong muscles sa legs!"

Touring life

Injury aside, Santos says she actually enjoyed the touring life. "That was my first time away from home, living alone, outside my comfort zone. The best part was traveling. I saw places I never thought I'd see in my lifetime."

The tour took her to cities across the United Kingdom, as well as Cologne, Germany, and Zurich, Switzerland.

"My most favorite was Zurich. That was my first experience with snow. Next is Bristol, because I liked the vibe, a mix of city and countryside. Also, Norwich, because that was when my fiancé, Mark [Zambrano, the sports journalist], visited me.

"I'm open to working on another international musical but now I want to be back home to get married and start a life with Mark. If the heavens open doors for me to work abroad again, at least I can take Mark."

After "Rak," Santos will reprise her Gawad-Buhay winning turn as the purported visionary Elsa in the rerun this September of The Sandbox Collective's "Himala, Isang Musikal," the musical adaptation of Ishmael Bernal's classic film.

Having performed on both sides of the world, Santos concludes: "Foreign theatergoers are very disciplined. Everything has to be on time. When you say six o'clock, you have to be onstage at six--everyone moving and warming up. If not, you're late. No one's ever late there. They're very systematic with rehearsal, room assignments, costumes, mics. Kaya naman natin sa Pilipinas e.

"But in terms of talent, we're on par. In terms of material, we're also on par. We have good writers, good musicians, and, I think, the best actors.

"[The English] kasi, most of them come from drama and theater schools. That, we don't have. 'Yung training natin, sabak kaagad tayo sa show. So I noticed Filipinos are driven by passion. Whenever they're onstage, ramdam na ramdam mo. It's always 100 percent.

"I'm not saying foreigners are not passionate. They have heart, but we have more heart. Put a foreigner side by side with a Filipino, lakas ng impact ng Pinoy."

PDI Review: 'Every Brilliant Thing' by The Sandbox Collective

PDI Feature: Guelan Luarca on 'Coriolanus' and Rody Vera on 'Nana Rosa'

PDI Review: 'Miong' by Repertory Philippines

PDI Review: 'The Phantom of the Opera' - The 2019 International Tour in Manila

PDI Feature: Myke Salomon and 'Ang Huling El Bimbo' cast recording

PDI Feature: Miguel Faustmann and 'Father's Day'

PDI Feature: James Reyes - obituary

PDI Review: 'Br. Benilde, The Musical' by College of St. Benilde Arts and Culture Cluster; 'Oedipus' by Dulaang Filipino; 'Kung Paano Maghiwalay' by FEU Theater Guild; 'Tao Po' by Juana Change Movement and Ateneo Fine Arts

PDI Review: 'Angels in America' by Atlantis Theatrical Entertainment Group

PDI Review: 'Spring Awakening' by Ateneo Blue Repertory

PDI Feature: 11th Gawad Buhay! Awards milestones

PDI Review: 'Makinal' by UP Dulaang Laboratoryo; 'Red' by Ateneo Fine Arts

PDI Feature: Audie Gemora and Teroy Guzman on 'The Dresser'

PDI Review: 'Saltik: Isang Laboratoryo' by FEU Theater Guild; 'Unperfect' and 'A Doll Life' by Ateneo Fine Arts; 'Marat/ Sade' by UP Dulaang Laboratoryo

PDI Opinion: 'Nice'

PDI Feature: 'Laro' and Pride Month with Artist Playground

PDI Review: 'The Kundiman Party' at the Peta Theater Center

PDI Feature: The ladies of 'Beautiful' on Carole King and women today

PDI Review: 'Roses for Ben' by Artist Playground

PDI Feature: Aicelle Santos, post-'Miss Saigon'