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Excerpts from the best-loved Philippine modern and contemporary musicals will be featured in the ambitious production, “Musikal!”, the gala concert to mark the 45th anniversary celebration of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), on Sept. 5-6.
The first Inquirer Lifestyle-Theater roundtable hosts eight actors–seven young first-time leads and one veteran on a stage comeback–whose standout performances this year made us bolt from our seats and cheer.
In an interview months ago, director Nonon Padilla said he would challenge any member of the audience to have a dry eye once “Lorenzo,” a rock opera on the indio Lorenzo Ruiz who died for his faith in 17th-century Japan, closes its curtain.
While a Filipino worker languishes in an Arab jail, awaiting execution, he decides to spend his days doing a play about another Filipino from a different century who also left the Philippines and suffered in another country: Lorenzo Ruiz.
This September, a new rock opera by Ryan Cayabyab opens at the College of St. Benilde. “Lorenzo”—about an OFW awaiting execution in the Middle East who, while in prison, creates a theater production based on the life of the first Filipino saint, San Lorenzo Ruiz—has music by Cayabyab, book and lyrics by Paul Dumol and Christian Vallez, production design by Gino Gonzales, and direction by Nonon Padilla.
