Leo, Tanya, Miranda, Yolanda and the neighborhood people

No, silly. This is not just a mere recollection of the Sesame Street anthem that allowed us to appreciate the people walking on the street each day. This is about Leo. That brawny and brooding kind of a man, with that toned body quite visible, thanks to his daily uniform that had seen better days. This Leo sacrifices for his sabungero of a father and an ingrate younger brother to provide them with some sort of comfort and three meals a day.

Tanya is a nursing board passer who gets disheartened and disillusioned with the realities of what a Pinay nurse must endure and survive in a Third World hospital — lack of medicines and equipment, overworked and underpaid situation, patients of all shapes and sizes and their ailments, from the regular buni and alipunga, to the sinaksak and lumuwa na ang bituka, just because the person on that stretcher has chosen to be the hero for that day. No wonder she’d rather be a promodizer, a teacher to South Koreans who want to learn Filipino and be an OFW somewhere in Sweden. 

Their lives and issues become larger than life in PETA Plus and Ticket 2 Me’s Endo, directed by Melvin Lee and written by Lisa Magtoto.

‘Endo’

Endo works because from Jade Castro’s film to the Lee/Magtoto stage adaptation, nothing is lost in the translation. As a matter fact, it can be a stand-alone play that brims with energy, excitement and drama. What makes it a more engrossing watch are the dance sequences that present the hills and valleys, tension and thrills, tentativeness and certainties faced by the major characters and ensemble.

Royce Cabrera as Leo carries the whole weight of the play. He is in his best element as he gives the character played by Jason Abalos in Castro’s movie honesty and vulnerability.  And what a stage presence he has! He nails the movement parts, and slays the on-cue, demanding emotional shifts. He is more than ready for male lead roles, on and off stage.

Jasmine Curtis-Smith plays Tanya as a dreamer, a realist, a total romantic and a pragmatist at the same time. On that PETA stage, she is strikingly beautiful, sincere and true to her character.

Cabrera and Smith’s chemistry is electric — their tenderness and softness make you blush and feel the immediacy of their intimacy. As their emotions escalate, you are not just jolted; you become part of the bumpy and ugly ride, and you want to shout and make them stop!

Endo is current, in your face. And yes, it does not want us to look the other way and continue to live in that state of apathy.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Miranda, reigning like she is God’s gift to that forsaken province where her high-waisted, pot-bellied husband with an accent that is distinctively regional rules as governor. Miranda, detached and bordering on the loony — she distributes imported, bottled spring water and sardines in oblong cans to make the hoi polloi constituents feel middle class so they can smile during photo opportunities that usually land in their provincial newspaper’s society section. How quaint!

She remembers all her husband’s indiscretions. She even picks a la favorita, that Eva (pronounced as Eeeva) who speaks English and her grammar spot-on for a provinciana who studied it in a mababang paaralan (elementary school). As to why she brought a whole opera and the philharmonic to the pueblo of that province whose name I could not even remember, cleaning and tidying up her husband’s political mess with her arts and culture shindigs is, of course, her expertise.

And yes, oh yes, Evita Peron and Imelda Romualdez-Marcos are no match to the hallucinations of the lonely self-proclaimed monarch that is Yolanda. Judy Garland must be rolling in her grave because she did not only butcher, she murdered “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Miranda is the major character in Evening at the Opera and Yolanda, in Ang Kalungkutan ng Mga Reyna. Both plays were written by the late, great Floy Quintos and directed by Dexter Santos. Encore Theater is its producer.

‘Miranda X Yolanda’

Brutal, gut-wrenching, visceral — these are the best words to describe the twin-bill by Quintos. Here, the elites are ruthless, the public they serve are reduced into playthings that can be easily disposed.

Being diabolical and maniacal are not alien to the elites. But they have mastered the art to conceal it. This was how Quintos presented them in the two plays. They do everything to maintain not only their grip but their hold to power and money, fueled by greed and lust, so that they can secure and perpetuate their illusion of immortality and legacy.

Ana Abad Santos as Miranda and Shamaine Buencamino as Yolanda, respectively, were at their most excellent. They gave their respective characters their needed shades of light and dark, doses of calmness and crazy, and parts of grace and grim, giving us two of the most terrifying yet pathetic women that walked and breathed on stage.

Equally compelling and superb were Joshua Cabiladas as Miranda’s Bingo, the literally big wolf in sheep’s clothing; and Topper Fabregas, as Yolanda’s Marcel who did his sacred task and supreme responsibility to serve his “majesty.”

Endo is ongoing at the PETA Theater Center up to 10 May.

Miranda X Yolanda runs at the Power Mac Center Stage Spotlight Black Box Theater now until 3 May.