All’s fairy in love and war
July 16, 2004 | 12:00am
Baz Luhrman revitalized a clichéd love team for the ADD generation with the cut-and-paste oversaturation of Romeo + Juliet, showing that even Elizabethan English can still somewhat make sense if recast in a more familiar, trendy and media-drenched context. The universal themes of life, love and betrayal, after all, never change, and the Bard was really closer to the soul of the masses than what distracted high schoolers have been misled to believe. The Metropolitan Theatre Guild’s interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is infused with the Luhrmanesque spirit of musical carnivality, dizzying conceptual costumes, and a touch of the absurd. Like having a polka dotted ice cream cart wheel in and out of the scene whether it be the fairy-dusted realm of the forest or the court of King Theseus. But while Romeo + Juliet was located in a surreal version of the now, which included turf wars, acid flashbacks and Hawaiian shirts, Midsummer is unplaceable in any identifiable future or past (and hence it would be wrong to say it’s merely a modernized retelling) but stays true to its dreamlike consistency, weaving in and out of the warp of our collective memories.
In the dressing room, watching Monica Llamas transform into Hermia, I noticed the bell sleeves of her top and the full iridescent skirt made from Vietnamese silk, and tried to date it. "So that’s... medieval?" She shrugged, indicating it perhaps could be but it’s so much more. "It’s not particularly set in any time. There’s a bit of sci-fi, history, fantasy, modernity... it’s like a dream. That’s what it is." "It’s Britney Spears in Toxic," Joel Trinidad says drily, putting on a girly wig and adjusting his nude biking shorts for his role as Demetrius. "It’s timeless," explains Nate, the costume assistant to Salvador Bernal, the play’s production designer and National Artist for Theater Design. Then, along with Issa Litton as Helena and Topper Fabregas as Lysander, the pairs proceeded to rehearse some dance steps – "the obligatory dance number" – while shouting, "Squid! Unggoy! Pusit! April Boy!" and miming the corresponding actions. Old Willy would have loved that.
The other costumes were not so medieval, and even "timeless" would be an unapt description. The dancers wear some kind of tie-dyed Trojan outfit, Theseus and Hippolyta verge on the Oriental operatic, and Oberon the King of Fairies, charismatically played by Paolo Fabregas, looks like a horned disco beast from Star Wars. Next to costume, the lighting provided much of the sense of location, or dislocation. The enchanted forest was simulated by strings of dancing green lights packed behind cracked fiberglass walls, casting an eerie glow and suggesting hi-fi nightclub orgies in pixieland. Puck, played by Miguel Vasquez(alternating with Epy Quizon and Myleze Dizon) and trapezing around on a harness, was a spritely but Gollum-like creature who doles out mischievous nightmares, but then rights them after he’s had his fun.
Perhaps the most hilarious part of the show was stolen by the rude mechanicals, the bunch of worksmen who attempt to put on a skit in honor of the soon-to-be-married. In an inspired move, all their lines were translated into Tagalog, to contrast the difference between them and the high brows, imbuing the players with a sense of authenticity. But rather than downsizing them into a potentially tacky variety segment, the players are given an odd touch of class: their dialogue is a mix of the poetic and the plebian, a refreshing shock to the ear just when you’ve gotten used to iambic pentameter. Translated by National Artist for Theater and Literature Rolando Tinio, the Tagalog is elevated, romantic and just as difficult – but delivered in ways that only recall the more baser, more baduy and more bading of our local vernacular. The players, dressed like hobos from Seven Samurai with Cebuano accents, are bumbling societal outcasts with only the sincerest of intentions and inadvertently, the crassest of innuendoes.
It is nothing short of ridiculous when Titania Queen of Fairies, eloquently portrayed by Miren Alvarez, makes spell-induced lewd advances to Bottom the asshead in classically theatrical metaphors of nature and beauty, while he responds, in Tagalog, with a request for some pinipig. "O mabait na pader," Bottom later wails dramatically as he performs, with his band of vaudeville ragamuffins, an overacted version of Pyramus and Thisbe, intentionally highlighting the comedic that is created when something is lost and thoroughly abused in translation. If Shakespeare was this clever, being upstaged in Tagalog only makes him more so. Bottom’s partner, doing the Chinese opera thing, screeches and mewls while moving protractedly, and tediously they end up as dead as Romeo and Juliet. This lamentable comedy satirizes the four young lovers who ended up in an almost-fatal but comical skerfuffle in the forest. (Speaking to us, it also sends up the whole dead seriousness of classical theater, exhuming Shakespeare from the grave and throwing him a party.) Yet the royals hardly realize this as they laugh and make fun of the terrible acting and naivete of the players, who felt it to warn their audience of the fact that "it is only a play."
It is only a play, but it is also a dream. Who’s doing the dreaming and who are the dreamed may be unanswerable metaphysical questions, but the play that was A Midsummer Night’s Dream is firmly Steven Uy’s, the Met’s executive officer. Founding the Metropolitan Theater Guild only in January this year, Uy has set into motion a long-term agenda that intends to lead a renaissance in Filipino theater. "We’ve got the talent in this country, but nobody has yet made Filipino theater viable as a professional industry. We want to produce Filipino productions, something of our own, on the scale and size of Broadway," Uy, 26, says. After being fed up and bored with working in the events industry for a few years, he took a piece of paper and scribbled down 10 points he wanted to achieve. He had always intended to return to theater, and saw that the 10 points were, at that moment, quite feasible. And in January, he called up a bunch of people and asked, "Do you wanna do a play?"
Midsummer, a play already familiar to Filipino audiences, was chosen as the Met’s opening shebang for a number of reasons. "It allowed us to play a lot with the technicals – the light, the flying, the fairies, the magic." He adds, "I love Shakespeare and it doesn’t get more theatrical than Shakespeare. The idea was to show you can produce an old classic and make it relatable to the audience, by contemporizing or deconstructing Shakespeare, and secondly, not by Filipinizing it, but spicing it with Filipino elements – the language, the look, the Filipino flair. It’s bringing Shakespeare closer to the people." While there is a nod in Baz Luhrman’s direction, Uy claims the Met team has been deconstructing Shakespeare long before. "Ricky (Abad, the director) has been doing this for such a long time, before Baz came out, with The Merchant of Venice. I did Midsummer Night’s Dream in college, in a disco. It’s hard to present Shakespeare classically these days, timeless as he is, to the MTV generation, so we try to break away and put in our context."
All part of the bigger plan, of which Midsummer is only the first line of attack. The Met is staging one production a year, and the one aimed for next July will be a Chinese play called Thunderstorm. "Right now we’re getting it translated and we’re hoping to use three languages. It’s interesting to see how we can mix and include in this as many different things, to make the audience see the truth of what we’re trying to do onstage." And 2006 is marked for a musical extravaganza. "Filipinos love to sing. We’re commissioning our first original musical – it’s going to be the biggest planned, but we wanted to put out a few things first before we did this."
Concurrently there are also three other things keeping the Met busy. In August they are holding a playwriting competition, with the intention of producing the winning play or musical. When they get their budget up, the groundwork of a new theater will be laid –"a world-class theater built to be a theater"– as most of the converted movie houses are simply insufficient for the many things they plan to do. With the theater, they can then put up a school, an Academy of the Arts where proper training can be given to not just to actors and artists, but to the production people. With facilities and infrastructure in place, those involved with other aspects of theater, from lighting to sound to costume design, will be trained to be professionals at what they do. It is no humble dream, but as Shakespeare himself hast writ, "Be not afraid of greatness."
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