Love amidst turbulence

Webster defines falsetto as a "male voice in an upper register beyond its normal range." If you want to know what that sounds like, listen to the very popular Earth, Wind and Fire hit, Reasons.

But those piercing, high-pitched voices have nothing to do with New Voice Company’s similarly-titled production. With its Friday and Saturday runs until Aug. 3 at the Music Museum, Falsettos has been giving adventurous partyphiles a viable alternative for their weekend entertainment fare. The Tony Award-winning Broadway smash was written by William Finn and James Lapine.

"Falsettos is about a boy (Jason, played by Joshua Ramirez) whose voice hasn’t changed," explains the show’s director Andrew Vergara, who is also NVC’s associate artistic director. "The metaphor is about his growing up, and this pertains to how he copes with the turbulence in his life, especially when he finds out that his dad left his mom because he fell in love with another man."

"Jason gets caught up with all the sudden paradigm shifts brought about by his parents’ breakup," explains jazz chanteuse Lynn Sherman (who plays Trina, Jason’s mom and Marvin’s wife). "My son in the story is wondering if he’s going to be gay himself."

"The irony of it all is that my husband still wants us to be one happy family," Lynn snickers. "It’s so Pinoy, don’t you think? Especially when I eventually fall in love with my psychiatrist, Dr. Mendel (played by Rito Asilo)."

"It’s an emotional roller-coaster of a play, but it has its funny moments too," she continues. "Andrew saw the original in New York some years back and he liked it immediately. Apparently, someone who also saw the original and our version said that ours was better."

"Being a musical, I guess I like the fact that the whole thing is pretty much sung through. I also liked the guy’s songs, especially Marvin and Whizzer’s song towards the end. That always gets my crying backstage every night!" Lynn admits.

Falsettos proved to be quite a challenge for its musical director, Bond Samson. "It was very ‘keyboard heavy’," he says. "Parang pang-concert pianist yung scores. We actually worked with the original scores but I added an instrument or two to ‘thicken’ the sound."

Doing Falsettos proved to be a breeze for Lynn, who essayed equally challenging roles in Rent some years back and the more recent Vagina Monologues. "Andrew is a genius. He knows everyone’s movements and lines. He could actually stand in for anyone," she exclaims. "He lets us do our thing and then he ‘fine-tunes’ it."

Andrew also brought out the best in the two new young actors who played Jason, Joshua Ramirez and Marco Aytona. After all, it’s not an easy feat to sing through an entire musical that has 41 musical numbers while acting out the demands of the role.

Both boys, who will make their theater debut via this production, were handpicked after exhausting auditions. Joshua was a student at New Voice’s summer theater workshop this year, while Marco belongs to ABS-CBN’s Talent Center.

Despite the good material and the equally-formidable ensemble of actors (Jenny Jamora, Lily Chu, Rito Asilo, Jake Macapagal, John Mulhall, Joel Trinidad and Pheona Baranda), Lynn laments, "I just wish that more people knew about it. In New York, everyone’s running to see the latest. I guess that’s expected from such a ‘cultural hub,’ right?"

"Here in Manila," she adds, "unless you have a superstar in your play, it’s so hard to pull people in. "Vagina Monologues had that certain novelty – that thing that drew people’s curiosity because of the title. Maybe we should just educate the audience some more."

Interestingly enough, the Falsettos audience seemed more respectful compared to those who saw Rent. Lynn relates, "At least, now with Falsettos, we haven’t heard cellphones going off in the middle of our performance."

"With Rent, it was terrible!" she recalls. "Cellphones would go off, and when the callers were reprimanded, they had the guts to get mad at us pa! Imagine that! In New York, when someone’s cell goes off, people from the audience will be the ones to throw the offending parties out in the street!"