“My Friend Has Come” accomplishes something only the best stories do: it manages to make you sympathize with characters who are objectively flawed. It is a great feat to take a person you would not happily share a room with in real life and make you weep for him all the same.
It was recently a fad on Facebook to list your 10 favorite books, and a quick survey of the results confirmed what I’d known for years: “The Little Prince” is on everybody’s list. It’s at the top of mine.
“Shrek The Musical,” which is running at Meralco Theater until Oct. 12, is a solid production. The production values are phenomenal. The props and costumes are well-made, the acting is competent, and the lights, sound and other fiddly bits that many productions this big get wrong or unevenly are done right.
After their amazing performance of “Ang Nawalang Kapatid” earlier this year, Dulaang UP apparently went straight to the top when looking for a new play to mount: Shakespeare.
One of the things one learns studying Literary Criticism is that objectivity in the classic sense is an impossibility. A theatrical review, for example, does not come out of nowhere, and is always deeply influenced by the values and life experience of the reviewer. The best he can do is be aware of his biases as he writes.
Tanghalang Pilipino’s “Kleptomaniacs,” written by Layeta Bucoy and directed by Tuxqs Rutaquio, is a brilliant experiment, a socially aware original Filipino rap musical. I wish it had worked out better. I was not happy with this play, for reasons that have nothing to do with its novel format and everything to do with storytelling.
It is clear just by looking at the promo materials that Resorts World Manila’s (RWM) ongoing production of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” is energetic, transgressively comical, and very, very, very gay.
It is a sad but accepted reality for teachers and theater reviewers that they must spend their lives pointing out the flaws in the works of others. It is a rare indulgence for a reviewer to gush about a beloved work without reservation.
