I wonder how Boy Abunda would feel and/or react if he happened to watch the same play, lasting no longer than 30 minutes. Knowing Boy, I’m sure he would laugh and laugh until he cried. I’m sure of that.
I wonder how Lauro Vizconde would feel and/or react if he happened to watch the trilogy’s Watawat. Not knowing Vizconde well, I can only surmise that he would cry and cry over the sad and painful memories that the 45-minute play would evoke.
Guess how Danny Dolor and I felt and reacted when we watched the Rene Villanueva trilogy last Saturday, a moonlit-night, at the open-air Rajah Sulayman Theater in Fort Santiago which through the years has served as venue of such theater classics as Larawan (directed by the late Lino Brocka with a different set of performers each time), Flores Para Los Muertos (Laurice Guillen as Blanche Dubois was a show-stopper in this vernacular version of A Streetcar Named Desire), Hanggang Dito na Lamang Maraming Salamat and dozens and dozens of other plays which have served as launching pads of the careers of many popular artists today (Celeste Legaspi among them, playing the title role in Perlita back in the late ’60s).
Danny and I were pleasantly shocked to realize that Watawat must have been inspired by the Vizconde massacre. Directed by Raffy Tejada, Watawat is about a man selling the house where his wife and three children were murdered, deadset on going back to the States and leaving everything behind, especially the painful memories of his murdered family, in a country where nothing is safe, not even your home. When Jack Yabut (as the husband/father) tears the watawat his dead little daughter has religiously drawn as a school project, he’s in effect blotting out Mother Country from his life – and memory. The performers, shown in photo on the next page, deserved a thunderous applause for an ensemble job well done.
The second play, not more than 20 minutes long, is Walang Iwanan, directed by Melvin Lee. The one-act, two-character play opens with a sexy matron (Gigette Reyes) and her toy boy (Nor Domingo) entering a hotel room during one of their regular trysts. As they undress and begin to fondle and caress and kiss each other, they’re discussing the toy boy’s impending marriage which, he assures his "sugar mommy" (and office boss), shouldn’t interfere with their illicit affair. Walang iwanan, remember?
We couldn’t help but feel like voyeurs (peeping through a hole on the motel wall) as the lovers make love under the moonlight, with the toy boy rendering his ladylove lip service, interrupted by the room-service bellboy just when he’s about to bury his head between her legs. At one point, the toy boy leaps out of bed and casually digs into his briefs.
That’s one of the most daring, most explicitly-sexy scenes I’ve ever seen mounted on the Rajah Sulayman stage, made sexier by the full moon overhead.
The third play, The Bomb (30 minutes), was just as "bold" as Walang Iwanan. Directed by Soxy Topacio, anak ng PETA (which is producing the trilogy), The Bomb is a spoof of the ABS-CBN Sunday showbiz talkshow The Buzz, with Melvin Lee (yes, the director of Walang Iwanan) playing the host and emerging more like John Lapuz than Boy Abunda who, I heard, was the original choice for the role but he begged off due to his other pressing commitments.
Don’t look now but The Bomb is unmistakeably "inspired" by the Hans Motenegro incident a few years back, with Phil Noble playing the salacious talent manager who uncovers (literally!) the starry-eyed young men he discovers purportedly for showbiz.
Wowie de Guzman ably acquits himself as Jaime Eduque, the reluctant showbiz aspirant from a good and decent family who is traumatized by his experience in the hands of the sexually insatiable talent manager. One scene that made the full-house audience, composed mostly of students, gasp in silence shows Wowie in his briefs, finally giving in (against his will) to the talent manager mounted on top of him, as if forcing a horse to jump over a hurdle.
The big revelation was bold actor (of Kasiping fame) Dante Balboa who seemed to have been to the theater born. What a natural actor! Dante is the daring young man who would drop his pants for anybody who could pay the price or who could help him realize his dream of stardom, going through his role (as Zoltan) mostly in his very revealing red bikini briefs.
Guess how The Bomb ends – yes, in an orgy, with even the bishop (Jess Evardone) participating, never mind if he continues to denounce the "moral decay" in our society from the pulpit, only to succumb to the call of the flesh by fondling his handsome sakristan (played by Karlo Enriquez, the gay Joey in the PLDT "Billy-Gracia" commercial).
I’m "daring" you to watch the sex scenes done "live" under the moonlight in the newly-facelifted Fort Santiago.
I wonder, would Hans Montenegro (maybe with girlfriend Maritoni Fernandez) watch it?
I wonder if boy Abunda would take time out from his air-tight TV schedule and have a good laugh over his "alter ego." (How would Boy have attacked the role? I wonder.)
I wonder if Lauro Vizconde could gather enough guts to watch a reenactment of his family’s murder and come out of Rajah Sulayman Theater dry-eyed.
Note: The Rene Villanueva trilogy is presented by the Philippine Educational Theater Association, or PETA, on its 35th theater season. More performances are scheduled on Feb. 20, 21 and 22, 7 p.m. sharp at the Rajah Sulayman Theater. For particulars, call 724-9637 or 410-0822.
(E-mail your reactions at rickylo@philstar.net.ph)