A truly ennobling Tsinoy musical
WHEN
watching a film or stage play for that matter, I have a certain predilection to anticipate the ending of the material at the back of my mind like a clueless detective.
This yardstick would classify the given material as either tad boring and predictable or there is something new and exciting for my eyes and ears to feast upon.
Applying this to “Binondo: A Tsinoy Musical” – written by a Tsinoy himself Ricky Lee with Gersom Chua, and Eljay Castro Deldoc and shown the past week at The Theater at Solaire Resort and Casino – I thought I was in for the usual syrupy treat of forever happy ending considering that its plot was one of Shakespeare’s usual triangulated love affair.
The story centers on a pretty Pinay songbird in a Binondo music bar in the early ‘ 70s who hit it off in a highly fertile one- night stand with a transient visiting Chinese scholar from mainland China.
Totally swept off upon seeing her for the first and last time but who swore to return and marry her, problem was, back home a pre-arranged nuptial waited for him. Put in the Pinay’s dying mother who was culturally indifferent to Chinese suitors and would rather much have a persistent activist Pinoy suitor for a son in-law.
Said Pinay singer consequently bore a daughter by the Chinese scholar who upon his return back home was ruthlessly caught captive in Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.
With the passing of time, the persistent Pinoy suitor ended up as the adoptive father in-law to the daughter of the jilted Pinay lover afflicted with a terminal disease like her mother.
This was but halfway into the narrative, but none is seen yet as to the end of the extended love triangle, while the other male protagonist on the Philippine side was also caught in conflict with the declaration of Martial Law.
Good that I was seated behind playwright Ricky Lee and in admiration I had to tell him he had me on the edge for a tricky tweak, albeit highly probable and poignant ending for the three main impassioned characters who became victims of their country’s respective social and cultural upheavals, and yet emerged stronger in spirit more than ever and triumphant in love through it all on a loftier level.
In all, Binondo: A Tsinoy Musical is a mammoth production that successfully thrived beyond one’s imagination in the realm of the elevating sights and sounds of the ennobling and the ephemeral.
I must give it to its producer Rebecca Shangkuan Chuaunsu ( PhD) upon whose life story the musical was partly based upon. The sights were a confluence of profundity by Joel Lamangan’s direction enhanced by the lights of Joey Nombres, and vigor in the rawness of its highly expressive choreography by Douglas Nierras.
Fresh from his momentous stint as musical director of the previous musical version of “Maynila Sa Kuko Ng Liwanag,” Von de Guzman proved beyond doubt he is lording it over now the rest of his peers including his seniors in the world of musical direction inhabited by repetitive and generic-sounding, shopworn musical directors.
GUESS WHO? A queenly queer of scents ( QQS) is gaining the reputation of having become a big- time pimp of sorts for a group sheiks from the Arab country.
One time, a gay sheik caught sight of a highly negotiable so-so actor/commercial model on TV. He contacted QQS to negotiate on his behalf. Lo and behold, QQS delivered the said actor pronto in a silver platter on the lap of the sheik.
Both the actor and the QQS were of course remunerated in handsome terms for their respective services by the sheik.
Clue: QQS is short of being a darling of the press and has become a controversial figure in the past.