The Lovers, The Dreamers And Me

Saturday, 6:30pm. My phone rings; it’s Ariel. “What’s your schedule tonight? Are you free?”

“Why?”

“The Met has allowed us to invite guests for tonight’s performance. You wanna watch?”

The Met is the new professional theater company run by mostly Tanghalang Ateneo alumni. Their first production is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where Ariel is part of the cast. The cheaper tickets are priced at Php2,500. Who am I to pass this up?

A day of rest and a 2,500-peso treat can do wonders for my health. Suddenly I’m well enough to go to RCBC Theater.

*****

The play starts with a flurry of Dexterian movement (nope, not Dexter with the laboratory, but Dexter the choreographer.) The set by Salvador Bernal is gorgeous; it’s the set he wanted when I directed the same play for TA back in ’93 or ’94 (gosh, I forget now.) The production is gorgeous to look at; most of the actors are exceptional. The players (headed by Sweet Lapus) are hilarious. They would have stolen the show from the leads if it weren’t for Paolo Fabregas and Miren Alvarez; as Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies respectively, they exude grace, confidence, and a sure command of the Bard’s poetry. They and the players give the play a lift, figuratively and literally (Oberon and Titania gracefully fly through the air on cables.)

Ironically it’s the lovers who drag the play down. And they’re supposed to be in the throes of lunatic love! Instead, none of them could muster the heights of giddiness of young love.

And the actress playing Puck was sadly miscast. That’s the danger of getting a TV/movie actress to do theater; if they haven’t done theater before, they’ll most likely flounder. And flounder she did, despite her best efforts. No amount of flying and somersaulting on air could lift her performance. Her name may bring in people, but her performance may make them want to leave.

Good thing Ricky Abad’s direction more than makes up for the inadequacies of his actors. As a director of college plays, Ricky has mastered the art of using all the directorial tools available to compensate for what the actors cannot achieve. So he used blocking, lighting, sound effects, and other tricks up his director’s sleeve to pull of the lovers’ scenes in the forest (which occupied the first half of part 2 after the intermission.)

The player’s performance of the play-within-a-play is the ultimate punchline. It’s also a hilarious testament to Shakespeare’s statement regarding the magic of love and theater: while you’re in it, the hours will seemingly pass unnoticed. Enjoy the illusion, for it is the illusion itself that’s the point. And if your lover or actor (or actress) is inadequate, let them make amends.

And if the play-within-the-play is not enough, there’s a grand Bollywood song-and-dance number in the end that’ll drive away the specter of inadequate lovers and actors. It’s the same in love and in showbiz: razzle-dazzle ‘em, and they’ll love you even more!

Unfortunately, as great a director as Ricky is with his sleight-of-hand tricks, in the end it’s his actress that fails him and exposes his bag of tricks: just as Puck was about to breeze through her closing soliloquy without a hitch, she buckled in the final few sentences.

Sigh.

******

When I directed Midsummer back in the 90s, I was trying to channel Baz Luhrman’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet by way of the stage. I used pop/dance songs and set the whole play in a disco.

So I thought it fitting that after the show I drop by Bed in Malate. There various fairies from the Metro were spinning and grinding to the music. As usual shirtless muscle-queens strutted their stuff on the ledge to the envious and hungry stares of the crowd below. It was heady, intoxicating. It was illusionary.

I went in alone and left the bar alone. It’s a nice, entertaining distraction, I thought to myself, but it’s not really the place for me.

And now I’m at home resting, preparing for another work week. I like it when everyone’s all here. There’s a comfort that’s reassuring. Last night in Bed just seems like a dream.

Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection—the lovers, the dreamers and me.