When 2017 kicked in, I kind of made a promise to myself to catch more theater productions in Manila. As I had been too busy with my 1-destination-per-month scheme last year, I hardly saw any local shows in 2016.
And since I’ve always enjoyed the shows that Repertory Philippines put out, I figured that at the very least, I should see all five shows they’ll have this for this season. After all, they have had (in my book) more hits than misses in their track record.
Luckily it turns out that 2017 is the company’s 50th year in the business and they have somehow managed to get a lot of their famous alums to sign on for this season’s plays, the first one being the ridiculously long titled Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. The show ran from January 20 to February 12 and I managed to catch the February 11 matinee last Saturday.
Directed by Bart Guingona, we catch a peek into the lives of three siblings all named after Chekhovian characters. We have Masha (Cherie Gil – Full Gallop) the beautiful and famous actress sister who’s visiting for the weekend, Vanya (Michael Williams – Dirty Old Musical) the closeted gay brother, and Sonia (Roselyn Perez – 33 Variations) the insecure and negative adopted sister. Vanya and Sonia stayed in Pennsylvania to take care of their ailing parents while Masha worked as an actress in order to support their living expenses.
Now that their parents are gone, Sonia and Vanya are facing a mid-life crisis as they realize that the best years of their lives have gone by. Masha, on the other hand, finding that she’s not as “in demand” as before, is contemplating on selling their childhood home in order to save money. Add into the mix Spike (Joaquin Valdez – The Last Five Years), Masha’s narcissistic young lover, Cassandra (Naths Everett – August Osage County), the house’s cleaning lady who can “see visions of the future”, and Nina (Mica Pineda – The Producers) their beautiful young neighbor and things get complicated real fast.
Repertory Philippines is quite known for usually picking fast paced screwball comedies (like Run For Your Wife! a couple of years ago) to open up their season. While not as fast paced nor as screwball-y, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike feels special somehow, in the sense that the characters – while still totally over-the-top and extreme – feel more familiar. I can see little bits of the people in my life in Masha’s need to be the star, in Vanya’s resistance to change and in Sonia’s self-pity. And that makes the experience of sitting through the show more real somehow because it’s not just a parody of funny but totally ridiculous characters; it’s a story about people.
I’m very glad that I managed to catch this show because it was a good way to open up the season. I can’t wait for the succeeding shows – I just hope that they get advertised more so that more people can enjoy them.
*On stage photos are from the Repertory Philippines Facebook page.
