BIG, BOLD, TRIPPY ‘BURUGUDUYSTUNSTUGUDUNSTUY’
The show can make viewers realize, if they haven’t already, how larger-than-life, how fantastic Parokya ni Edgar’s musical universe is
Parokya ni Edgar fans will definitely enjoy “Buruguduystunstugudunstuy: Ang Parokya ni Edgar musical,” the new jukebox production mounted by Full House Theater Company of Newport World Resorts (the same company behind the massively successful Eraserheads-derived musical “Ang Huling El Bimbo”).
Playwright
Rody Vera has fashioned a musical that fully captures the band’s adventurous spirit, scrappy wit and irreverent humor with a fanciful, if slight scenario that’s probably as trippy as local musicals can get. The show actually can make viewers realize, if they haven’t already, how larger-than-life, how fantastic Parokya’s musical universe is. It’s what distinguishes the band from contemporaries like Eraserheads and Rivermaya. “Buruguduystunstugudunstuy” makes its flights of fancy, such as putting Mang Jose as some sort of a spiritual adviser to an alien and making Mister Suave fall in love with a manananggal, not only easy to swallow but fully sensible in its make-believe world. Director Dexter Santos, for his part, succeeds in bringing to the theater stage ofthe ten manic energy of the band’s music as well as the oversized, often cartoony characters in the songs. He does it with every creative eye candy the show’s obviously big budget can afford—a full LED frame for the proscenium and a full LED wall for backdrop, a cascading, multilevel stage with several moving elements, a huge ensemble (on top of an already-large cast of main and supporting characters), several harnesses, 20-foot-tall puppets, a 14-piece live band (the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra) and lots of colorful and voluminous costumes.
Big show with big music
None of it is unwarranted or excessive. “Buruguduystunstugudunstuy” is a big show with big music in a big venue, and it does play to the rafters.
But there’s probably an even more engaging and involving version, one set in a smaller, more intimate theater where the energy would be more kinetic, palpable and immersive for the audience too, drawing them in more fully and taking them more compellingly along the journey to the hearts, minds and souls the four leads take on the way to finding the truth about themselves and their individual powers to overcome and transcend their struggles.
Those leads are all women—a bullied school girl with a handicap, a security guard constantly being ribbed about when she’s getting married, an unhappy wife to a philandering husband and a discontented scavenger. It’s not only an inspired move by the veteran award-winning Vera: it’s subversive.
While the piece does not in any way tip the gender scale in Parokya’s male-oriented discography and its heavy macho sensibility, it’s rather bold to put women front and center in a Parokya joint. And when they ultimately choose self-determination and self-expression as a way out and forward, “Buruguduystunstugudunstuy” gives off a feminist energy without undermining anything the band is known for. In the end, it’s very much in keeping with the band’s punk attitude.
“Buruguduystunstugudunstuy: Ang Parokya ni Edgar Musical” runs until June 8 at the Newport Performing Arts Theater. Tickets available at all TicketWorld and SM Tickets outlets.