No stage gimmickry, just plain singing

Manila got a glimpse of the promise of our next Broadway star at a recent concert in Silang, Cavite. Jose Llana’s first concert in the Philippines was a resounding success despite typhoon Chedeng and a horrendous traffic jam on the South Expressway courtesy of a wayward gas tanker.

The rains caused the concert to be moved from Tagaytay’s Gourmet’s Café to the nearby St. Anthony’s school gym. This turned out to be a good thing because the gym accommodated more tables for the surprisingly large number of folk who showed up. Director Chris Millado should be congratulated not just for the fast-paced show but for the transformation of the gym into a secret garden of sorts, complete with fountain.

Much has been written of late about Jose Llana, Lea Salonga’s leading man in Flower Drum Song. We heard bits and pieces of him as he guested on television shows, but this was the first time his talents as a singer and performer were on full show. And he did not disappoint.

No flashing lights or smoke machines, no sexy back-up dancers, Jose Llana simply sang–hits from Broadway, where he seems to be most at home, love songs, ballads, Filipino songs–his voice in turn smooth and caressing, then powerful and soaring.

Starting with the show-stopping Corner of the Sky from Pippin, he mellowed down with The Way You Look Tonight and the Josh Groban hit, To Where You Are. He totally won over the audience with his next song, Someone to Watch Over Me, dedicated to his maternal grandmother, who he invited up on stage. How can you not love a guy who holds hands with his lola and sings to her?

The first of his four duets was You Are Beautiful from Flower Drum Song with Cris Villonco, home on vacation from studies at Sarah Lawrence, more mature now but still refreshingly youthful.

George Michael’s Kissing a Fool got a snappier, jazzed up treatment which went well with the audience, despite it being a predominantly Spirit of '67 kind of crowd. As an aside, this was the first song Jose ever sang karaoke-style, in front of his cousins and other family members some time ago.

Jose is most at home doing musical theater, and a straight concert was obviously a new experience. But his lack of stage gimmickry was a welcome and refreshing change from the usual concert experience hereabouts. I Have Dreamed from King and I (his Broadway debut at the tender age of 18), Something’s Coming from West Side Story and If I Loved You from Carousel followed, before Ogie Alcasid’s Kailangan Kita which is one of the tracks on Jose’s soon to be released CD.

Louie Ocampo seems to have found the perfect interpreter for his love song To Love You Once Again, which he wrote for his wife and which he had resisted giving to a lot of singers who had asked to record the song, some of them pretty big names in the local entertainment scene. And it was pretty obvious he made a good choice in Jose, who sang it not just beautifully but with a lot of heart.

Jose admitted that being a Pinoy on Broadway, he could not escape being asked if he ever did Miss Saigon. The answer was no, but that night he obliged with a duet of Last Night of the World with Nini de Jesus, who played Kim in the Toronto production of the musical that started it all for Pinoys. A second duet with Nini was Whenever I Call You Friend.

"You can take the Pinoy out of the Philippines, but you can’t take Just Once out of the Pinoy," he quipped by way of introducing the song he said he has always liked but which his American friends are lukewarm about. Obviously it is a Pinoy favorite, judging by the number of people that sang along.

There were two other Tagalog songs, Bakit Ngayon Ka Lang Dumating and Kailangan Ko’y Ikaw, the former another duet with Cris Villonco. There was another family values moment when Jose remembered his paternal grandmother who passed away in Ilocos a couple of weeks back. For her, he sang a moving a cappella rendition of the Beatles’ Yesterday, which brought to fore the clarity of his voice.

This is the Moment was a fitting closing number, and it definitely was Jose’s moment. A native son had come home not as a prodigal son but as a bright shining promise of a–pardon the much-abused phrase–world-class entertainer. We’re always ready to embrace and shower our affections on a new star, and Jose Llana is so likeable, so talented and such a nice guy we can’t help but love him.

Being Pinoy of course, he obliged with encore numbers, You Are My Song with both Cris Villonco and Nini de Jesus, plus the adorable boy quartet Streamline (they should do something about that name!) who opened the show.

The last number of the concert rightfully belonged to Jose, as he paid tribute to the city that he has called home (he lives in Battery Park) for the past few years, singing New York State of Mind. The ovations were justly deserved, and thankfully the success of this concert has paved the way for more. A repeat will be held on July 1, in Manila this time, at the ballroom of the Westin Philippine Plaza, so wayward tankers should not be a problem. Jose also joins the star-studded cast of Lagi Kitang Mamahalin on July 11 and 12 at the Cultural Center’s Main Theater, a re-staging of last year’s tribute to National Artists, where Jose’s rendition of Bayan Ko is much awaited.

He returns to the US to rehearse and tour with Flower Drum Song the rest of the year, but the promise is for Jose to return to Manila in January next year for a major concert with Ryan Cayabyab and Cris Villonco. There’s so much more of Jose Llana for Manila audiences to discover.