Got home at nearly 3:30am last night, after watching
Ma-Yi's short-run production and then drinks at
Silver Swan. Fun, fun, fun.
Some thoughts on the play before I forget, and in case I do a review. The theater was packed. And we made a wrong move in waiting for the folks who were late because by the time we got inside the theater the only seats left were on the aisle!! But I was at an ideal "row" smack in the middle so I was fine with it.
Overall, I loved it. I've seen a few Ma-Yi plays in the past and though many of them are reportedly really good, I think I have had the unfortunate luck to watch the ones that were a bit on the weak side. I won't mention names. heh.
The Romance of Magno Rubio is the story of a short, Filipino farm worker in the central valleys of California in the early 1930s. There was a cast of five actors playing farmworkers (one sometimes a woman!) whose bond was absolutely believable. Unlike past Ma-Yi plays (at least the few that I have seen), I felt this time, all the actors were excellent and the chemistry they had with each other really helpd the believability of their relationships in the story. The stage design was simple, yet beautful. It was basically a bunch of plywood boards standing, with hooks to hang the chairs on. I really liked that everything on stage was used. In many scenes (and in various ways!), the actors would use the chairs but while the chairs hung on the wooden boards as "decor", it gave depth to the simple stage set up. Equally effective was the light design and the the barbed wire that separated the audience from the actors on stage. One could easily interpret the barbed wire (which was basically 4-5 well-spaced out metal wires going from one end of the stage to the other, so you could still view the actors easily) as a symbol of the oppressive conditions of the farmworkers. At the same time, at the very beginning of the play, the actors come off the stage (which was on level with the audience) to stand in front of the barbed wire and then return to the stage. There's a rhythm present througout the play. One can't help but feel this rhythm in the dialogue, when they sing, and when they have a "jam session" with their farm tools (the "tools" are actually Kali sticks.). I was particularly struck by the amount of Tagalog (and some Bisaya!) in the play. Ma-Yi doesn't necessarily cater to a Tagalog speaking audience, and I knew there were many non-Tagalog speakers in the audience so my eyes and ears perked up. I really paid attention to the scenes where a lot of Tagalog was spoken and I have to say they did a pretty good job pulling it off. The actors were very good at either acting out the Tagalog words they would say through physical gestures or the intonation. The danger, I've found, in using Tagalog for an non-Tagalog speaking audience, is to over do the translations within the dialogue. Saying Kamusta, how are you or Kain na, let's eat can get pretty tiresome and distracting if you use that technique too much. The play did a fine job creating the balance.They were actually pretty conservative in doing so. I can only recall one scene when they explicitly did that, but it was part of the storyline where someone was dictating a letter in Tagalog to be translated to English so it worked really well. I think they could have afforded to do that a little bit more, maybe 15% more, especially the parts where the Tagalog dialogue was just too hilarious (especially one of the fight scenes where a character(s?) says Puuuu-tttttaaaannnnng-iiiiiiiina-mooooooo in slow motion.) to be limited to the privileged few who could understand it. Then again, there's always something lost in the translation. I would be content to having a translation, in the program, of the beautifully performed Tagalog songs they sing to give the audience member a deeper understanding after the play. On the downside, the accents employed by the actors were not very consistent. There would be scenes where the accent would be complete gone. At first I thought it was happening because they were stepping out of their roles as characters and became narrators (which they actually did from time to time) but there were scenes in which they were clearly supposed to be "in character" where the accent was lost. Also, I usually cringe when non-Tagalog or Bisayan actors try to imitate the accent but the actors in this play did a pretty good job. I was really impressed and pleasantly surprised. The scenes in which the actors come together in a chorus dialogue were usually good, but not entirely consistent. The rhyming and chorus dialogues could have come dangerously close to being corny, but for the most part it strengthened the play. I really loved how the play (whether it was through the dialogue or the actors themselves, I can't decide) was able to make me really empathize for Magno Rubio so that the jokes that may have been hilarious at the start of the play, slowly becomes bittersweet, sad, and eventually just plain mean. They were able to make you laugh out loud in one scene and simultaneously break your heart. The innovative staging, the talented actors, the simple yet effect set all come together to make it one of the strongest productions of Ma-Yi that I have seen. The current production is supposed to be just a workshop production, that is developing for something bigger in the fall. I can't wait to see how it develops.
