(Play Review) Sepharad: Voces de Exilio
Play Review
Sepharad – Is There a Relevance to the Filipinos?
Sepharad: Voces de Exilio or Sepharad: Voices of Exile is a story/novel written by Antonio Muňoz Molina which tells about people, Spanish particularly, who were very far from their homeland and misses one’s family. Those people were eager, in a foreign place, to meet old neighbors (back in their beloved country) and love to roam through shops in the plaza. They eat and drank to their hearts upon the moment meeting each fellowmen to use up the time that is allotted for them.
In Philippines' real life situation, the story of the Spanish Sephardim, through the marvelous revision of Ateneo graduate, Ronan Capinding, brought the essence of the similarity of both sides' situation- with regards to family problems, being loyal to a party, hitch with comrades and other sorts of dilemmas.
There, from the act/story of Eugenia Ginzburg and family (first act in the first part), a Filipino viewer immediately identifies her struggles as likened to a typical Filipino mother, who has undergone accusations of disloyalty to a party which is not true. Other acts relevant to the Filipinos were the story of Seňor Salama and the caretaker. Seňor Salama, after meeting with the beautiful Spanish woman, somehow decreases his caginess from relating to anyone. After he met the Spanish woman, he somehow realizes that he does not need to live alone and to be traumatized to what he had endured in the past. He then visits a railway station somewhere in Poland that was a former concentration camp, also where his mother and two sisters perished from the holocausts. Salama, now recuperating from his past, together with the caretaker, tries to reconstruct their memories of the place where thousands of fellow men spent their last breath on earth.
Now Jose Estrella, being the director, interpreted the script of Mr. Ronan very well because I clearly got the message of the play because of the actors' joyful entrance to meet ‘missed’ neighbors and friends.
Obviously, Madame Josefina Estrella introduced a new approach of style in the play. Other than that the play is somewhat sub-modern and typically Filipino, I was surprised if not ‘shocked’ of the “sex [part/ act] evolution” in UP Theatre as production head Bj Borja puts it. Because the original story is Spanish, I believe that the story is somewhat seriously sensual and the inclusion of sex/ bed scenes in the play (particularly in the story of Mateo Zapaton and Sister Maria de Golgotha) is nonetheless important in expressing out the meaning of the story. There in that story, a nun finally took the reason of the truth of being less or unfortunate (while being) in the house of the Lord. She states that in the convent, she is being imprisoned because she yearns for freedom which she knows that she can find and hold in America. As I’ve written above, the play is somewhat sub-modern. Why? It is so because it is a two-fold play merged together into one. I may say so because the stories of Eugenia Ginzburg and family, Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenska, Margarette Buber - Neumann and Heinz Neumann, Mateo Zapaton and Sister Maria de Golgotha differs mainly in setting and time to the stories: Call Center Agents Somewhere in Libis and The Dishwasher from Pangasinan. Though time and setting distinguished, the style and orientation of the play uniformed in meaning, that which – Spanish or whether Filipinos or Jews; are most likely have had experienced a situation where they became loyal to their communities and were betrayed, did miss one’s distant family and continuous to struggle due to racial differences in some countries.
Basically, Sepharad’s completing actors or I should explain further – actors who brought achievement in the play were the same lead actors/tresses. There are not much characters involved to portray ‘filling’ or ‘extra’ personalities except maybe for the uniformed soldiers who arrested the play’s protagonists. Even the caretaker, the dishwasher, Carlos Bulosan and the former NPA, though may have had appeared only once, still held essential roles and are factors for the play’s/ story’s wholeness or finishing point. The actors/tresses had done their part very well and I must salute to Mailes Kanapi who portrayed Greta Neumann, Sister Barancco, guardian and part of chorus who took off the shame in her. I mean, if panty’s need to be seen, then she; without hesitation, opens her legs or raises her feet (from a lying position) and the skirt goes down to make her ‘black’ underwear visible. Well, those scenes were of stories illustrating her as a whore – a woman who won’t be able to sustain life without the money of man. Also, I was quite shocked by the acts made by Sigrid Bernardo who portrayed Sister Maria de Golgotha and Ryan Sese as Mateo Zapaton who sort of did a [live show]. They executed the most surprising bed scene of all and I’d say, "the characters did it to let the fire out." I salute to their elegant execution of the [sexy] scene. I didn’t find it neither profane nor abusive because first and foremost, it is a play conducted on stage; in a theater, and I believe so that acting done on stage is considered high class (acting) due to the absence of “cut’s and take two’s” that movies have if an actor misses or took a word or sentence for a mistake. I clap my hands, not only to those aforementioned people but also to: Dolly Gutierrez (Eugenia Ginzburg / Woman/ call center agent/ chorus) for portraying the martyr Eugenia Ginzburg; Richard de Guzman (Heinz Neumann/ A Filipino in Holtville/ Seňor Isaac Salama/ chorus) who is a very good story teller; Lex Marcos (Franz Kafka/ Eugenia’s husband/ call center agent/ chorus) for his humorous [bad mouthing] the callers in the call center agency (I totally laughed out loud when he said “GAGO, GAGO, GAGO!”, all over again to a foreign caller who’s insulting his intellect) and Cheryl Ramos (Milena Jesenska /call center agent /chorus), the married woman who loved Franz’s letters but still can’t leave her husband.
Costumes that the characters wore were just right. I also like the sound because it carried my heart to the place where they were. That is – through the wise usage of music, I also felt the supposed-to-be-felt-feeling if I’m on the [dark] situation. One downside with regards to the technical aspects of the play is the lighting. I read from the (small, black) ‘program book/guide’ which I bought for Php 50.00 to Anna Salcedo, the marketing head from the production staff that the lights design was arranged by Voltaire de Jesus. I kind of felt disappointed on both the video – because it cannot be seen clearly because of the stage’s luminosity, and the lighting itself that I think, should the usage have been more minimized so that it won’t suppress the light emanated by the projector. The problem is; if there are no lights, the audience won’t be able to see the characters at all. If they did not further calculate the solutions to the problem then I hoped that the committee or staff behind that just separated the viewing of the videos from the acts.
Honestly, the stage is still too illuminated for a video to be projected at the background. Besides that technical ‘wrongness’, I say, Wilfrida Ma. Guerrero theatre is a suitable theatre for such a play because it is big enough to support settings that don’t differ much to each other with regards to/of using the props. Though the stage is perfectly fine, I found distractions with the theatre’s audience’s seats that; that every time an audience would like to somehow move or stretch out, sensitively gives off a ‘squeaking and squawking’ sounds made by, I think, aged screws and springs. The maintenance should work on that problem. The sound is really annoying.
Lastly, I am happy and satisfied indeed to say that what value taken from me when I bought the Sepharad ticket paid off for it was worth it. I was able to relate and understand limerick scripts of Filipino lexis made by Mr. Ronan Capinding, of course and also, found my eyebrows stuck together as I think and listen carefully every time super-serious events were run and played.
Upon the 30th season, Dulaang UP once again has performed a prestigious and ambitious project where a cultivation of Filipino acting skills and talent was shown.
NOTE: taken from my other blog and transfered here
I know this is too long. But if it happens that you are looking for SEPHARAD story, then you have everything you need to know here. I won't edit anymore. 'Nuff said! ^_^