The weather was kind of nuts today, and I'm glad that I didn't even consider doing laundry despite how sunny it was when we woke up. And work has been busy this week, so it's only today that I'm getting back to talking about Walang Aray. And today, I want to talk more about individual performances on top of my previous comments about the general structure (and the comedy) of the show.
Our leads were Lance Reblando as Julia and Gio Gahol as Tenyong - both were great, but Lance REALLY carried the show. She has such presence on stage, whether it was an intensely dramatic scene or executing a clever bit of physical comedy. She was absolutely captivating, and you could totally buy into the idea that she's a sarsuela star. I won't even go into the narrative of Lance being a transwoman - she's a beautiful actress and a gift to Philippine theater, period. Gio was a great balance for her, and he had some very intense emotions and an equally powerful singing voice. The two had some pretty good chemistry on stage. We all bought into the romance, I'm sure.
Divine Augina as Monica and Carlon Matobato as Lucas were major scene-stealers among the supporting cast. Divine was comedy magic whenever she was on stage, and Carlon was just the BEST as a storyteller - you'll understand what I mean should you watch the show. And Gold Villar-Lim was another gem as Juana, Julia's mother. You could tell she was having a lot of fun with the role.
Johnnie Moran surprised me as Padre Alfaro. This role could have become painfully stereotypical, but Johnnie really gave the character such power and vitality. He's one of the potential "villains" in the show, but you can't deny that he has great presence on stage, and you want to see more of him.
I didn't keep great tabs on everyone in the ensemble, but some standouts burned into my memory are Gerard Dy and James Lanante. Both were really great with their various bits of character dialog, and the audience would just buy into whatever they were selling at the time. If anything, they didn't feel like they were part of the ensemble, given how they handled some of their supporting characters. We also got to catch Bomba Ding as a member of the ensemble, and he was "doing the most" in DRPH-speak. He naturally had tremendous physicality, but I also enjoyed a lot of his character dialogue moments. As much as he has his drag career, I would love to see him in more stage productions in the future.
Looking at the playbill (and my photo of the matinee run of Walang Aray before our evening show), the rest of the cast is pretty solid and nicely encourages rewatching. We ended up with that Sunday evening show because of how it fit in our schedule more than the cast, but I am SO GLAD we ended up with the group that we did. They all worked together so well and created some true theater magic that night.
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