Fiddling in the woods

The last two months of the year bring us two well-loved musicals. Repertory Philippines, which has long nurtured some of the country’s best theater and musical talents, has chosen to end its 40th season with the Broadway favorite Fiddler on the Roof. With music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and book by Joseph Stein, the play recounts the travails of a small Jewish town in Tsarist Russia. Classic Broadway is Rep’s strength, and the production doesn’t disappoint.

(But first, a disclaimer: the material doesn’t do much for me. Like many people, I first encountered it in the form of the 1971 movie directed by Norman Jewison. The story seemed too remote to me then, and still does.)

Any appraisal of the play must begin with Tevye, the play’s heart and soul. With stalwart Miguel Faustmann, the role is in good hands. Tevye is the well from which most of the story’s humor and pathos springs, and Faustmann has no trouble carrying the emotional ballast. He is in turns funny and sad, world-weary and tender, pathetic, pitiful, and endearing. I did think for a while that I would have preferred someone with a more rotund physique and a deeper voice, but that is perhaps because Chaim Topol, who starred in the film version, inhabited the character so fully I could only imagine someone who looked and sounded like him in the role. To Faustmann’s credit, his performance made me forget this thought quickly.

A large majority of the other important characters are played by much younger performers, which, in one way, is a good sign: many products of the Rep dream machine have gone on to bigger things. But it also means that the production relies on performers still honing their skills.

Highlights of the show include the rousing opening number (Tradition); performed by the entire company, it starts off the show with a bang. The dream sequence complete with sprightly ghosts is playful and giddy. The song Far from the Home I Love, sung by Cris Villonco (as the second daughter Hodel), is the play’s most poignant moment, perhaps because the scene features the evening’s best performers, Villonco and Faustmann. His Tevye responds to her song of farewell with a tearful and moving plea to God to keep his daughter safe.

Less successful is the dancing. It is largely the material’s shortcoming. The dance sequences don’t move the story along (one reason I found the same sequences in the film version odd). A few performers seemed unsure about their movements, something I ascribe to first-performance jitters (I caught the show on its preview night). Also, the stage seemed a bit too small for all the dancing the company wanted to do, which may have caused some of the tentativeness. Too bad the orchestra pit took some of the floor space the troupe could have used. But that’s the result of a worthwhile tradeoff. There’s something to be said, after all, about live orchestral music, and it’s refreshing to hear the voices backed by no less than the Manila Symphony Orchestra (under the baton of Arturo Molina).

Some of those talented Rep alums are performing a bit further north, at the Music Museum to be specific, where New Voice Company is putting on Into the Woods. Deploying a smaller troupe and holding forth in a smaller theater, the company casts accomplished singers and actors in almost every role. The result is, pound for pound, a far more satisfying show.

The material, now 20 years old, feels fresh and clever despite the post-Shrek revisioning of fairytales that have become rather common in mainstream entertainment. In large part that is due to Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics. (The book is by James Lapine.) Deftly stringing words on complex melodic strands, Sondheim writes songs that tell stories, reveal thought and feeling, and sound dizzyingly good.

It’s a losing fight trying to pick out highlights. Many of the numbers are sung so well and with such verve that choosing a few that stand out seems pointless. Maybe I’d go with Your Fault with its quick and agile exchanges between Jack (Joaqui Valdez), the Baker (Michael Williams), the Witch (made deliciously sultry by Lynn Sherman), Cinderella (Cathy Azanza), and Little Red Riding Hood (Julia Abueva, whose youth belies a veteran’s composure). Or the affecting No One Is Alone (led by Azanza’s Cinderella). Or the charmingly smug Agony sung by the too-handsome-for-their-own-good princes (John Mulhall and Jamie Wilson). Or any number that includes the Baker’s Wife (Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, whose performance stood out among many wonderful ones).

The troupe performs the first act, which lasts an hour and a half but zips by in a happy blur, at such a high level of energy and with such polish and skill that you almost feel that the second act isn’t necessary. When it comes, a weakness of the material emerges: the play’s narrative force droops, which feels all the stronger for falling from such a high point. (Ever After, sung by the company at the close of the first act, is electric.) It sounds great on paper: the play pursues the different stories and finds out what comes after “happily ever after,” which of course isn’t unbridled happiness, but at the cost of a sense of urgency.

The story darkens. The woods are lovely, yes, but also dark and deep, and the play considers betrayal, disillusionment and death, things the fairytales of our childhood merely glanced at. The play ends with a happiness not unalloyed by the protective glow of childhood, but colored by the knowingness of grownups who are no longer innocents.

New Voice Company makes the journey into and out of these woods a sheer delight.

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Fiddler on the Roof by Repertory Philippines runs until December 16 at the Onstage theater of Greenbelt 1, Makati. Call 887–0710. Into the Woods by New Voice Company runs until December 8 at the Music Museum, Greenhills. Call 896–6695, 896–5497, or 899–0630.

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