Making Promises Keeping Promises

What you get when you fall in love with the music of Burt Bacharach?

Bart Guingona was around eight years old in the late ’60s when his father drove the family up to Baguio for a vacation, and the music that kept playing on the car stereo was Burt Bacharach. He forgets now the exact title of the album, but it must have been the one with the cover that had a brunette crossing her legs and wearing a mod hairdo.

"He brought along two cassette tapes, one was Bacharach, the other Sergio Mendes," Bart relates one Sunday afternoon at the Army Navy Club’s Sunset Lounge, where the cast is in the midst of rehearsals for his latest play, "Promises, Promises," which features the music of Bacharach.

After first hearing Bacharach, Bart vowed that one day he’d want to be a part of that world.

His parents were in their late 20s or early 30s at the time when Bacharach, who is now 72, first hit it big in the ’60s, and when "Promises, Promises" was first staged in the US. The Philippine version is actually Bart’s first musical with his theater company, Actor’s Actors, which is better known for staging straight dramatic plays.

Just before rehearsals begin, Bart instructs his cast, including singer Rachel Alejandro, whose father Hajji would be more familiar with the world of bell bottoms and afro hairdos, to listen to as many Bacharach tapes and CDs that they can get a hold of, the better to internalize that groovy, psychedelic era.

"Many of the kids may not know Bacharach, but when they hear a song, they go, ‘ah, sa kanya pala yon (that’s his song!)’," Bart says. He also made sure that everyone involved in "Promises, Promises" has seen the Austin Powers movies, perhaps to the point of memorizing entire lines of Mike Myers’ multiple characters.

Bacharach was there too in "The Spy Who Shagged Me," courtesy of Elvis Costello who did "I’ll Never Fall in Love Again".

And Bart sounds like Dr. Evil when he says, "I just love that album," referring to the collaboration of Costello and Bacharach a couple of years ago. "They were all new songs, Bacharach songs, with Costello, who may be more familiar to the kids, singing," he says.

As with Costello, so with Ugoy-Ugoy, the Pinoy jazz band that will render Bacharach live when the musical goes on stage for three weekends beginning Feb. 1 at OnStage in Greenbelt, Makati, in the run-up to Valentine’s Day.

At the rehearsal, the dancers are doing some run-throughs of steps, with a minus one of Ugoy-Ugoy playing.

"They have a good, strong brass section" fitted for Bacharach’s music, Bart describes Ugoy-Ugoy, who rehearse the music at Blue Moon Studio in Cubao. The possibility of releasing a CD or cassette of the musical, however, is far-fetched, because of copyright problems.

Wielding the baton for Ugoy-Ugoy is Bond Samson, whose work in "Rent" caught Bart’s attention.

"He’s (Bond) been egging me to do a musical with him for some time," says Bart, who describes his friend as "the new Ryan (Cayabyab)."

Now that retro is the "in" thing again, he says their deciding to do "Promises, Promises" was "sheer serendipity".

The musical was originally slated to be staged last October, but because of the events of 9-11, or the terrorist attacks in New York, Bart says he re-thought the feasibility of doing a "frothy musical" so soon afterwards.

So certain cast members had to drop out because of conflict in commitments, but Bart says he prefers working with a smaller ensemble.

"I’m glad Rachel’s here, I have complete confidence in her," the director says of his female lead. "And Michael Williams I believe is going to do a star turn; musical comedy is his forte."

A pity versatile Jaime Fabregas had to beg off because of schedule conflicts; veteran Bernardo Bernardo has been tapped to replace him.

The difference between directing a musical and a drama, Bart says, is in the approach.

"In a musical, it is more on logistics because there are so many aspects involved–the choreography, the music .... While a straight play concentrates on the text, from the subtext to what I call the supertext," he says.

He is also looking forward to doing more musicals, like the ’70s period piece "Hair," which he said he would want not so much to reinvent as to "revisit".

"But let’s see how this one turns out first," he says, recalling how he got "burned" in the experimental theater production "Fire Water Woman."

These days, he’s in panic mode, with rehearsals everyday and in different venues, from the Army Navy Club to a building on Kalayaan Avenue in Makati, to a music studio in Cubao, and finally in his own pad at the Syquia Apartments behind Aristocrat Restaurant in Malate. "I pity the cast," he says, noting how they have to go about town almost like headless chickens. Usually he prefers non-airconditioned venues for rehearsals, like the well ventilated Sunset Lounge, so that the actors’ sweat don’t dry on them instantly and make them get sick.

For Bart, "Promises, Promises" encapsulates a time of innocence though it was marked by a sexual recklessness. "This was before women’s liberation, before AIDS," he says, so the world was different then.

As it is different now, decades removed from that trip to Baguio, when a cassette tape changed an impressionable kid’s view of the world and what it needs, certainly more than raindrops falling on his young head.