This afternoon we made it just in time to catch the matinee show of The Reconciliation Dinner at the PETA Theater in Quezon City despite some rather stressful Metro Manila weekend traffic. PETA is hardly my favorite theater venue given terrible parking options and less-than-ideal seating. But some really great plays get staged here, so there's no avoiding it. But I'm super glad we made the effort for this one.
The play is about two families who become divided because of the lead-up to the 2022 Philippine National Elections and thus the titular dinner is about them eventually trying to reconnect after the elections. And this is a very real thing in terms of how the political lines that were first drawn after Duterte came to power in 2016 and just reinforced by how things turned out in 2022 and a lot of friendships and families we put to the test. The play's subject matter was amazingly relatable and did try to present various perspectives that people have been taking on whether it's between those that supported Leni versus those that supported Marcos to even the generation divide between "yellow" and "pink" perspectives.
The play went really deep in terms of capturing a lot of the different feelings brought about by the elections and the politics of recent years. Did it have something amazing to say at the end or some sort of thesis statement for people to digest? That can get a little muddy and I'm not sure if the playwright really went far enough - but I acknowledge this is only a one-act play and there's only so much. Plus this is still a potentially sensitive topic for many and just holding up a mirror and not having a firmer perspective may be sufficient for things.
Regardless, I was very entertained and this play moved me. It's probably one of the best, if not THE best plays we've seen this year (or in recent years if we pull in online stuff from the pandemic years) and I hope more people get to see it. It's supposed to be their last run for this show and I hope that there's a great recording of this if only to preserve this for posterity. This is some important stuff and we need to make sure it doesn't get lost in time.
I'll talk about or games this weekend in tomorrow's update.
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