Not a dramatic reading, please!
Isn’t that what sophomores are sometimes assigned to do in the classroom by their drama instructor? Reason enough to sit at the back of the room, catch a few winks to escape from an hour of boredom, wait for the bell to ring, and flee in relief when the agony is over.
Wait, wait. It’s not Montano’s Sabina they are going to read and drown you in a deluge of tears. They are actors from the Barangay Theater Guild. And it’s not only one but two one-act plays by Anton Chekov. Reason enough to rush to the FEU Auditorium to watch this presentation of the FEU President’s Committee on Culture and the Cultural Planners Association of the Philippines.
Chekov’s full-length plays are neither tragedies nor comedies. They are realistic dramas that depict a slice-of-life. There is laughter, to be sure, but it is tinged with sadness, like something transitory, slowly but relentlessly passing away with time. The characters of Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters live their lives with the hope that their labors may not bring them happiness but they will amount to something good, if not for themselves, for those who will come after them.
The one-acters are simply comic with more than just a touch of satire.
The Boor revolves around Grigori Smirnov (Bart Guingona), owner of a provincial estate who rudely descends on a grieving widow, Helena Popov (Adriana Agcaoili), to collect an amount of rubles that her late husband owes him. Her aging manservant, Luka (Jose Mari Avellana) attempts in vain to keep the intruder from tormenting his mistress, but the man refuses to leave without the money. Helena touches the heart of Grigori, and from a boorish Russian bear he becomes a loving lap-dog. The sudden change of affairs may challenge credibility but one thing is certain – that the young Chekhov was only a closet realist when in fact he was a real romantic.
In The Marriage Proposal, Ivan (Jaime del Mundo) visits a neighboring estate with courtship in mind, but his blundering ways are misconstrued by Stephan Chubukov (Avellana) and his daughter, Natalya (Ivi Avellana-Cosio), who suspect that his appearance has to do with a parcel of land that has been in dispute by their respective families for generations. Comic complications arise but eventually these are resolved and the play has a fairy-tale ending, to everyone’s delight.
This staged reading of Chekov’s short plays has much going for it. Not only a superb cast of actors whose names are associated with the best in the craft but also a director, a living legend whose position in the realm of the theater is a niche among the immortals – Daisy Hontiveros Avellana, National Artist for Theater. She is assisted by her sons, Jose Mari, associate director, and Lamberto Jr., music director. Credits are due to PCC chairperson Rustica Carpio and her technical staff, Masscomm majors of the FEU Institute of Arts and Sciences.
Over at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Dulaang UP in cooperation with the Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts is staging Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theatre as part of its 28th theatre season 2003-2004. The comedy is being served in two versions, English and Filipino.
Moliere’s comic play is an X-ray view of the follies and foibles of a hypochondriac, Argan (Richard Cunanan), who inflicts his affliction on his household with his endless litany of his aches and pains. The house maid, Toinette (Frances Makil-Ignacio), a bouncy, buxom babe bursting to the seams with joie de vivre, annoys her master no end because of her homilies on health. His pretty daughter, Angelique (Lily Chu; understudy Angelu Santos), is worried sick over his papa’s condition because of the foolishness that he might resort to – such as marrying her off to the idiot of a son, Thomas (Andre Christian Torres/Marte Nerona), of a doctor, Diafoirus (Jovy Peregrino/Jacques June Borlaza) and thus keep his precious livres in his moneybag. Her old man threatens to consign her to a nunnery if she does not abide by his will. The hapless lass has fallen in love with a matinee-idol look-alike, Cleante (Romnick Sarmenta) before whom Thomas is absolutely the pits.
The only person who anticipates his extinction with devilish glee is his second wife, Beline (Lesley Leveriza) because of the fortune she expects to inherit. Moreover, she does not relish wasting her youth in a sickroom nursing an invalid. The vixen has a paramour, Bonnefoy (Neil Ryan Sese/Borlaza), waiting in the wings.
In the meantime, Argan, succumbing to his fancies, fusses over ointments and alembics, poultices and paregoric, enemas and leeches, thus amassing medical lore on ailments and humors.
Argan’s brother, Beralde (Fonz Deza) and Toinette suggest that in as much as he has already acquired extensive knowledge on the science of healing, he should work for a medical degree at the university.
Up to this point, the play bustles with the vim and vigor of a comic genius at the peak of his creative prowess. If in the first half of the comedy Moliere pokes fun at the idiosyncrasies of a man who imagines that he is plagued by ills of all kinds, in the last half he boldly takes on the whole community of medical practitioners. If earlier his satire is like a wart on the tip of the nose, in the final scene, it is an enormous hemorrhoid gazing out of an asshole.
Argan is taking his oral comprehensives before a panel of physicians headed by the president of the medical college (Tony Mabesa). A chorus of doctors quacks its lines in English mixed with pig-Latin. The whole scene is mock-ceremonial, at the end of which Argan is awarded his degree as his maid and his daughter rejoice. From here on our perennial invalid will follow the ancient Greek dictum: "Physician, heal thyself."
Cunanan hams it up gleefully, tongue-in-cheek, but he needs to watch out for Makil-Ignacio, a scene-stealer. And veteran actors Deza and Mabesa make strong impressions in cameo roles as well.
This production of The Imaginary Invalid is incisively directed by Amiel Leonardia who is also the lights designer. Ogie Juliano’s eclectic costume designs which range from the period costumes of neo-classical France to contemporary formal wear stress the timelessness of Moliere.
Moliere, the pseudonym of Jean Baptiste Poquelan, often acted in his own plays. He was in the cast of The Imaginary Invalid on Feb. 17, 1673 when he felt indisposed but still finished the performance like a good trouper. He passed away before midnight. The wags of the day quipped that he died laughing.
His fellow countryman of a later day, Voltaire, wrote: "Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing." Moliere would have agreed.
Do I agree? Even if I do, I won’t admit it for fear that my doctor might prescribe an enema.
When I asked my class if they would like to go all the way to UP Diliman to watch a comedy, they answered with one voice: "Yes! Yes! Yes!"