IT’S BEEN RAINING WOMEN IN local theater these past months—and hallelujah to that.
After the sassy, saucy girls of the musical revue “We’re Still Hot,” led by Pinky Marquez, and Cherie Gil’s spellbinding turn in Atlantis Productions’ “Doubt” at the RCBC Theater, three more extraordinary female characters have recently ended their moments on Manila’s stages: Maria Callas, embodied with fierce energy by Jay Glorioso in the Philippine Opera Company’s production of Terrence McNally’s “Master Class;” Paulina Escobar, the vengeful ex-political prisoner played by Bituin Escalante in Actor’s Actors Inc.’s “Death and the Maiden;” and Lady Torrance/Regina Torralba, the tragic heroine of Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending,” incarnated on the Tanghalang Pilipino stage by Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino.
“Orpheus” is one of the playwright’s lesser-known works, but in theme and tone it is quintessential Williams—an impassioned examination of how tradition, conformity and propriety can be wielded to snuff out desire, passion, independent thought, life itself.
As with Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Serafina Delle Rose in “The Rose Tattoo” or Karen Stone in Williams’ novel “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone,” “Orpheus’” heroine, Lady Torrance, is at once a stubborn, emotional, mature but not necessarily knowing woman who is an outcast in the circles she moves in, “different” in various ways from the herd, and so becomes the object of suspicion and hostility from peers and neighbors.
Eternal outsider
In TP’s “Orfeo sa Impiyerno,” Lady Torrance had become Regina Torralba, a middle-aged woman trapped in a brutish marriage to a dying local kingpin (Mario O’Hara, terrifying). Regina, with her broad Visayan accent, is an eternal outsider looking in on the clammy, feverishly intolerant Tagalog town that now spends its days clucking about her impending widowhood.
Into this hell comes her Orpheus in the form of Val (Neil Ryan Sese), a virile, wandering guitar player who applies for work in her store. Soon, he becomes more than just a hired help, and their inevitable descent into tragedy constitutes a classic Williams jeremiad against the oppression of the weak by the strong.
Sese, exuding genuine heat, played Val with a bit more bluster than necessary. Of the fine supporting cast, two were exceptional: Mailes Kanapi as the sensitive town hussy Carol, and Peewee O’Hara as the piety-addled wife of the hepe (Lorli Villanueva would have loved this role).
George de Jesus’ exacting adaptation transposed the squalid American South to the violent feudal milieu of Central Luzon in the 1960s, with warlords and their tattling wives holding sway over the populace.
In its suffocating feel and tone, keyed to a delirious pitch somewhere between gothic and naturalistic, this “Orfeo” summoned in moments the same dank, overheated small-town atmosphere in Lino Brocka’s “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang.” That sprawling emotionalism had its rewards under Jose Estrella’s generous direction, which mined poignant truths from Williams’ Sturm und Drang.
At the vortex of that storm was Buencamino, who was phenomenal.
So thoroughly felt was her performance that, in a frenzied scene where Regina was trying to prevent Val from leaving by taking possession of his precious guitar, Buencamino’s taut, proud face suddenly dissolved into a small giggle, as she realized the absurd lengths her newfound passion had taken her. It was a fleeting but telling gesture, the kind that implied this actress had reached the white-hot, radioactive center of her character’s heart.
Greatest practitioner
Outsize feelings were also the norm in Philippine Opera Company’s “Master Class,” directed by Michael Williams. The subject, after all, was opera—annotated, dissected and exalted by no less than its greatest practitioner: Maria Callas, La Divina herself.
In Terrence Mcnally’s richly imagined meditation on the alchemical symbiosis of life, love and art, Callas’ interactions with novice opera singers (based on actual master classes she conducted in New York in 1971) provides a window into the full flower of her genius: how she used her life experiences, from her destitute childhood in Greece to her unhappy years with Aristotle Onassis, to inform and elevate her craft.
Callas in “Master Class” is a powerhouse role, and Jay Glorioso stepped up to the plate magnificently. Like the character she was bringing to life onstage, this actress didn’t seem like to the manor born. The hauteur she projected, the majestic sense of entitlement—all were clearly the result of someone pulling herself up by sheer self-regard and talent. Brava to such a funny, fearsome, tender, commanding, and finally moving performance.
Ana Feleo, Karla Gutierrez and Ceejay Javier were persuasive in supporting parts. It was the tenor John Glen Gaerlan who let rip with a glorious “Recondita Armonia” from “Tosca,” which in the text touched Callas enough to make her cry, and in this show had us misty eyed, too.
Political melodrama
Williams the director of “Master Class” gave way a few weeks later to Williams the actor, this time as the third wheel in Ariel Dorfman’s political cliffhanger “Death and the Maiden,” under co-star Bart Guingona’s direction.
They were joined by Bituin Escalante, the much-lauded musical theater actress who was making her straight-play debut in the AAI production at the RCBC Theater.
Escalante is nowhere near middle age, and her character, Paulina Escobar, could conceivably be only in her late 30s. But Paulina’s hellish past in the hands of the former military regime has aged her and, quite possibly, driven her off the deep end.
So when a stranger she believes is her past torturer comes to her home, she assaults him, ties him to a chair, and proceeds to put him on trial, with her husband, lawyer Gerardo Escobar (Guingona), serving as counsel. The bizarre set-up becomes the soapbox from which Dorfman asks hard questions about restitution and forgiveness, truth and justice (“People can die from an excessive dose of the truth!” so goes one argument), the costs of the political on the personal.
Paulina, forever on the verge of hysteria, was a physically ideal part for Escalante. Her compact, lynx-like energy onstage has always been compelling, and her earthy features seemed to validate a past spent in the activist trenches.
It’s painful to report, therefore, that Escalante was out of her depth in this intermittently absorbing play. She was effective in moments, and had the requisite surface cues down pat—the uncontrolled shaking, the rumpled hair, the quivering voice, the moments when she’d strike her head with her fists. It was a classic madwoman act, self-conscious and superficial, as if a deeper level of icy fury was just beyond the actress’ reach.
Guingona was, as usual, intense—forceful even in passivity. But Williams, as Dr. Roberto Miranda the alleged torturer, posed quite a pickle.
Gene Hackman first played this role on Broadway, then Ben Kingsley in Roman Polanski’s film version (which went the tepid way by discarding the play’s crisp ambiguity). There’s a reason these actors were chosen for the part. They ooze, even in stillness, a potent sense of danger, a frisson of malevolence that keeps the air around them charged with inexplicable tension.
Williams’ scrupulously decent Dr. Miranda hinted at no such undertones. Perhaps it was the production’s point—that evil could reside in even the most likable and ordinary-looking of individuals. The lack of sinister subtext, however, threw the play’s sense of tension off-key. Every time this Dr. Miranda protested his innocence, we were more than ready to believe him. There went Escalante’s heroic attempts at outrage.
Despite its high-minded themes, “Death and the Maiden” is constructed like a Costa-Gavras thriller. This staging played more like a literate, earnest clash of ideas. As a political melodrama, it got the politics right, but fell short of the drama.
E-mail the author at gcadiz@inquirer.com.ph
