The twilight of Marcos rule
The drag queen is magnetically retro- tawdry and dynamic. The interrogation scene is so chilling it makes your flesh crawl. There are a number of strong, sharply focused moments in Jessica Hagedorn’s sprawling, diffuse “Dogeaters” at the Magic Theatre, but their collective impact is muted by the chaos of narratives in the production that opened Wednesday, Feb. 10.
It’s a noble effort and an ambitious one. Hagedorn’s multiple- plot, landmark 1990 novel, a portrait of Manila in the tumultuous declining years of the Marcos dictator-
ship, contains so many principal characters that it’s easy to see why even — or, perhaps, especially — its own author would have trouble crafting a dramatically cohesive piece from its large scope. And though the play has had well- received runs elsewhere since its first staging in ’ 98, its Bay Area premiere, newly revised by Hagedorn, may suffer from being too close to the hearts of its creators.
Magic Artistic Director Loretta Greco worked closely with Hagedorn on her initial adaptation two decades ago, and says she’s wanted to stage it ever since. Hagedorn has waited a long time for it to come to her American hometown, where she arrived from the Philippines at 14 — a city remarkably lacking in Filipino theater, despite the efforts of the small Bindlestiff Studio. Hagedorn has been the primary exception, with appearances as a performance artist — most notably at Berkeley Rep in ’ 94 — and two plays with Campo Santo.
For the play, she’s eliminated several story lines and principal characters, and diminished others to mere mentions, making their significance invisible to those who don’t know the novel. But with so many seemingly separate plots, from many strata of Philippine society, that tie together in some surprising ways in the novel, she’s kept some characters who remain so thinly developed that their stories seem superfluous. And even the stories of the most significant figures don’t begin to take hold until well into the second act.
Partly, this is part and parcel of trying to present a kaleidoscopic look at Manila in the early 1980s, an effort that succeeds best in Greco’s physical production. With the Magic’s theater converted into a semi- cabaret ( the first few rows of seats have been removed to make room for cafe tables and chairs), scenic designer Hana Kim’s lively projections — on the corrugated metal walls of the set — immerse the action in everything from lush patchworks of ferns and a beauty pageant to gritty street scenes, political rallies and a discoballlit drag club.
A pastiche of news bulletins sets up the political context in the beginning. Hagedorn’s use of two entertainment- TV hosts as sometime narrators doesn’t work as well. Despite the best efforts of Esperanza Catubig and Melvign Badiola ( more appealing as a comically over- the- top hairdresser), their jokes aren’t particularly funny and the material they’ve been given to provide historical background comes off as simplistic and didactic.
Rio ( an instantly magnetic Rinabeth Apostol) seems the more natural narrator, if one is needed. An expat visiting from San Francisco, making her an apparent stand- in for the author, she’s an intriguing, smart observer with some nice interchanges with her grandmother ( Charisse Loriaux, also impressive as the frustrated sexobject movie star Lolita Luna) and a story begging for more development.
The newly crowned Miss Philippines Daisy Avila ( a luminous Christine Jamlig) emerges early as a key character. She’s the daughter of populist reformer and Marcos opponent Senator Avila ( Ogie Zulueta), whose assassination throws the country into turmoil, and in love with a leader of a rebel army ( Mike Sagun, in a sweet- funny wooing scene). Jomar Tagatac exudes eerily underplayed evil as her Marcosloyalist uncle, General Ledesma.
Tagatac is outstanding as drag queen club- owner Perlita, both in his lipsync performance and as an increasingly central character in a story involving Rafael Jordan’s taut, impressive work as an aspiring DJ and male prostitute and Zulueta as his abusive pimp. Beverly Sotelo is captivating as an evasive Imelda Marcos and in a deliciously surprising prayer- aria as well.
But the main takeaway of this “Dogeaters” may be that panoramic treatments onstage tend to give us less of a sense of another culture than well- developed individual stories can.