Pink Fox Patrol: Philippine Theatre 2012

Showing posts with label Philippine Theatre 2012. Show all posts

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Carnage: The Movie Version of 'God of Carnage'

I did some early research into the play, God of Carnage, which is being staged here with Lea Salonga and Menchu Lauchengco Yulo among the leads. Turns out, Hollywood royalty has already done a movie version of this - Roman Polanski directed it - Oscar winners, Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and Oscar nominee John C. Reilly are the four main characters playing in it!

Looks like the local version is something to look forward to!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Theatre Review: The Forsaken House - Relevant Now as it was Then

with director Tony Mabesa

with Greg de Leon who was impressive in his role as primo

with Atom Araullo who was in the audience

with Frances Makil-Ignacio who gave a wonderful performance that day

with Sig Pecho who portrayed one of the sons

with the very tall Leo Rialp whom I last saw last year in Bawal Tumawid Nakamamatay

with Tess Dumpit

with Therese Carlos

with Ross Pesigan who was popular with the girls in the audience

with Karen Gaerlan, one of the daughters in the play

with Chad Hemady, the guy who eloped with one of the Don's daughters

Wilfredo Ma. Guerrero writes about a rich Filipino family in the late 1920s in his play The Forsaken House. Interestingly, although the play was set generations ago, anyone in the audience can tell you pointedly that the issues the play is talking about, is as relevant now, as it was almost 90 years ago! Even I could actually see myself in the characters of the young teenagers trying their best to assert their independence from their strict father and their loving mother. There are seven children in the play and each one has an important role to play.

As for me, except maybe for a thing or two, I don't find anything much disagreeable about how the rich Don disciplines his children. It's really tough to be a parent. As they say, dapat may tamang timpla sa disiplina, otherwise, they go amok, as the children in this play shows!

I was impressed with the set design as it really looked like a 1920s house. The cute Ross Pesigan was there, and I was quite happy to have a photo with him. I also took the chance to have a photo with two of the more goodlooking guys in the cast, Sig Pecho and Chad Hemady. Leo Rialp and Greg de Leon were very imposing in their roles, while Frances Makil-Ignacio really brought the house down with her funny lines and perfect comedic timing.

I was also surprised that the older members of the family had Spanish speaking lines like Vamos a comer or Dame una agua fria! So I guess the old rich before spoke both good Spanish and English. Sadly, the cast would speak Tagalog to their household help. I still that's how people use Tagalog nowadays, just to talk to the common man.

All in all, I'm sure the mostly college student audience that morning came out with a food for thought as they went back to their homes. I'm sure they too can relate to the young characters in this play.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Theatre Review: Find Your Kind of Love in 'Fireflies'

With cast member, Dave Fabros

With Dave, the head of the Japan Foundation here in Manila, and Tanghalang Ateneo's Artistic Director Ricky Abad

Mama with Dave, the head of the Japan Foundation here in Manila, and Fireflies' director Ricky Abad

With cast member Mirick Paala

With cast member Katskie Flores

Cast members Mirick Paala and Ella Palileo

With cast member Ella Palileo

With cast member Xander Soriano

With cast member Atrio Hapitan

I don't remember ever watching a contemporary Japanese play, and that does not count the noh play I saw in Tokyo years ago. So when I saw that the Tanghalang Ateneo was staging one as their final piece for the schoolyear, I decided to watch it, given that most plays shown here are written either by local or Western authors, rarely by our fellow Asian playwrights.

As what we would expect, the play's set design was minimalist at best and just like Carlos Celdran's Livin' La Vida Imelda, it used four different smaller stage sets to mark the different scenes and the different couples in the play. Interestingly, with the theme of love being universal and all, it wouldn't be surprising to discover that even our local couples feel the same way as the couples in the play. Actually, when I talked to Dave Fabros after the play, I told him that there are times when I do what his character does, just for the sheer fun of it! Well, that may not count as love, just fun really.

There are three other couples in the movie, each at their own stage of loving, and for someone like me who has gone to Mars and back when it comes to love - I have experienced all of those emotions - that's why the play is something I can appreciate. I am just amazed though that the very young cast can do the same, knowing that maybe, just maybe, they may not have yet experienced what their characters have gone through.

My favorite couple in the play is the Husband and Wife, played by Xander Soriano and Katskie Flores respectively, who both seem very comfortable with their roles, exchanging banter effortlessly, which sometimes become tense then tender within minutes, just like how couples who have been together for a long time, talk to each other.

The young, flirtatious couple played by Mirick Paala and Ella Palileo is the most fun to watch since they are still at that stage of sizing each other up and trying to make the best impression, carefully constructing their words into sentences that should not offend but regale the other.

And of course, there's the 'madrama' kind of love which we usually see among young-ish couples in their early to late 20s, depicted in this play by Nicolo Magno and Cindy Lopez. It's tentative yet full of wanting, the urong-sulong kind, the one where "I miss you" when you're not around - but I can't stand you when you're here type of love. They don't get any resolution as the play ends which is just as well, because even in the real world, we know of couples who take forever to admit to each other that they really love each other.

Finally, there's the flirtatious kind of love, well, maybe not love, more of lust really, as played by Dave Fabros and Cindy Lopez. That Cindy's character actually agrees to this date just shows how she is undecided on her true feelings for her lover, or maybe, she just needs her job so much that she has to say yes to the boss, or else....

All is not lovey-dovey here because with love also comes loneliness and isolation which is par for course for people who fall in love. You are in a high when you're together, while you go mad when your object of affection is not around.

You can be at any age in your life right now but I'm sure you'll find that kind of love for you when you watch this play.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Theatre Review: Not crazed enough in 'Doc Resureccion'

I actually missed this play due to some scheduling problems so it's great that I found a review about it. It does seem to be like a very serious play!

Theater:�Not crazed enough in 'Doc Resureccion'

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Theatre Review: Isang Araw Sa Karnabal

I caught two plays from the currently running Eyeball: New Visions in Philippine Theater at the Cultural Center of the Philippines last Sunday. One of the plays was entitled "Isang Araw Sa Karnabal", written by Nicolas Pichay, a play which won the Palanca Award in the One Act Play category.

Sheenly Gener and Yul Servo served as the couple in this show that I caught and the play was quite interesting since it interposed a love story into a case of a daughter left by a desaparesido. It was alternately funny and sad and there was never a dull moment as you slowly discover what this relationship is really about. Sheenly's character has never found her father and because of that, she's now having issues about it, while Yul, plays her boyfriend, who, only appears to Sheenly now, after disappearing for a few months. All these issues are discussed and acted out and you really feel that a denouement and a climax is reached in the end when both characters thresh those issues out.

It's a pity they had to play to a thin crowd. More Filipinos should know about what the CCP is offering since their works are not only entertaining but thought-provoking too!