Tag Archives: virgin labfest 7

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death and comedy at the Virgin Labfest 7

The comedy with which death is dealt in two plays at the Virgin Labfest 7, presented at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, was in no way extraordinary. After all, we’re in a country where laughter in the face of difficulty is cliché.

Yet what might be extraordinary in both The Valley Mission Care written by Russell Legaspi and directed by Missy Maramara, and Bawal Tumawid Nakamamatay written and directed by Joey Paras, is precisely its reconfiguration of these clichés into notions of letting go and letting things be. The two plays are given contexts that are particularly of the current times, anywhere that there’s a friendly smiling Filipino.

on Bawal Tumawid Nakamamatay:

Which isn’t to say that Bawal Tumawid Nakamamatay wasn’t funny; it was funny in the way slapstick and loudness, as well as characters – and actors! – with perfect timing necessarily are. Gimay Galvan as the coffee shop barista going through her own love crisis on Valentine’s Day was perfectly consistent as the angry lesbian, as was Rodel Bar Sumooc as the cigarette vendor who would pass through and give his unsolicited two cents’ worth to the conversation. Baento is perfectly fag hag working class, the comedy emanating from her self-assured performance, weight, flashy dress and all. Rialp, given the limits of Mang Caloy’s character, surprisingly blazes into anger and regret and sadness at the point when his story unravels, glaring at the distance even when he is reminiscing. It’s the one moment when Mang Caloy’s character makes sense, and Rialp must take the credit for acting that was luminescent.

on The Valley Mission Care:

This mission was also about freedom from The Valley, a prison of sorts for the spritely old man. Ashlyn was heaven sent for Lolo Cisco, and he lost no time in appealing to her inner-romantic, if not her hidden-Pinoy: do this for me hija, do this for yourself. Ashlyn struggles between her job and her guilt and ends up helping Lolo Cisco anyway. Here, Ashlyn’s struggle is stretched out a wee bit, with no real sense of what’s going through her head, how she reconciles it within herself.

And it’s here that Estañero shines. In the end, her connection with Lolo Cisco, while not made logical by the narrative, is revealed by Estañero to be about a sincere honest compassion. When in the end she tears up, it’s difficult not to be carried away, sunrise and all. Sepulveda meanwhile plays Lolo Cisco with a perfect balance of fieriness and weakness, with excitement and weariness in his eyes.

the complete article, i.e., not just these excerpts, are here.

kultura

two plays: Virgin Labfest 7

because with a festival pass at P1,000 pesos, these two plays were already value for money. and really it makes you wonder why P1,000 pesos would allow you to watch all 18 plays at Virgin Labfest, yet all it will get you are 4 to 6 movies give or take, at the Cinemalaya. and we wonder where the double standard lies?

on Floy Quintos’ Evening At The Opera

When a stage is filled with a king-size bed, a dresser, and an ottoman you don’t know when to begin feeling uncomfortable: the mere sight of a bed conjures up a sex scene, and sex is always reason for discomfort amongst an immature audience, including the three guys behind me who chatted each other up throughout the play before this one.

But sex as we imagine it wouldn’t be reason for discomfort in that cold little theater; it would be politics that would hush the noisiest of audiences, encapsulated as it is in this bedroom.

Floy Quintos’ Evening at the Opera (directed by Jomari Jose) is the story of rural politics, as we know it, as we hear it in the news, as it has been imagined in movies, presented by documentaries. That this is also the story of dynasties left unquestioned, of marriages of convenience, of political machismo, of class versus crass, of the wealthy and rich among us, are layers that thicken this stage of a stark white bed and a governor’s wife in a bright red dress.

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on Rae Red’s Kawala

What happens when the tiny space that is the Tanghalang Huseng Batute at the country’s cultural center is deemed too large? What happens when it is made into the two walls and two doors of a condominium elevator with the one constant presence within it?

Some really creative funny theater, that’s what.

Written by Rae Red and directed by Paolo O’Hara, Kawala shows us aspects of our urban contemporary life in Manila within an elevator that has no truth other than that of the young man who tends to it, the elevator boy.

Alwin (Cris Pasturan) is a fresh graduate, ready to move on and away from the oppressive walls of the elevator. In the course of a day, he articulates this unfreedom, as he shows how this world revolves around him, trusted as he is by the condominium’s tenants, central as he is to their existence.

Familiarity is easy, friendliness is default. It is here that you realize this boy’s life is beyond that elevator’s walls, because there is much to be said about opening those doors. And so it becomes understandable why the big shot sleazy dirty old man, the ex-bold star turned serious actor, the gold digger stalking her prey all hop into this elevator and demand a friendship of sorts with Alwin. He must hear no evil, see no evil, speak no….

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