Jolly 'Bee' makes for (quite) filling show

Philippine Daily Inquirer, 02.30.2009

Would it be fair to compare the Atlantis version with the 2007 BlueRep one?


THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM County Spelling Bee” is a rather unwieldy title for a Broadway musical, though one finds out soon enough that it is entirely apropos for a show that finds joyous comic possibilities in Roman letters thrown together to form kilometric-sounding words--the stranger, the better. (omphaloskepsis, anyone? How about trichotillomania?)

The quirkiness isn’t limited to this show’s vocabulary. Each of the six misfits who populate the musical’s putative spelling contest (nine, if you include the extra-perky emcee, the pill-popping spelling master and the ex-con-counselor) can very well define idiosyncrasy with clinical precision.

“‘Survivor’ for nerds” was, in fact, how the director James Lapine once described the William Finn-Rachel Sheinkin musical he first mounted Off-Broadway and successfully shepherded to Tony honors in 2005. The nerds in question, rest assured, are for the most part only endearing and never off-putting.

“Spelling Bee’s” eccentric charms are now on display at RCBC Theater in Makati, where Atlantis Productions has mounted it under Bobby Garcia’s savvy direction. The show runs until April 4.

Two local shows
For the record, there have been two local “Spelling Bees”--this one, and an amateur production directed by Andrei Pamintuan for Ateneo Blue Repertory in June 2007, featuring a cast of all-student actors.

The exception was Felix Rivera, who stepped in at one point from his perch as musical coach to play the part of Vice Principal Douglas Panch, the spelling master. Rivera now plays Chip Tolentino, the reigning champion and Boy Scout with a pronounced case of raging hormones, in the Atlantis musical.

Would it be fair to compare the two versions? One was, after all, a bare-bones campus production, while the other is a professionally mounted show with veteran stars (Cathy Azanza-Dy, Pheona Baranda, Rycharde Everley, Johann Dela Fuente, Carla Guevara-Laforteza, Noel Rayos, Thea Tadiar, Joel Trinidad and Rivera) and a director with a distinguished resume.

Given the cramped venue where BlueRep’s “Spelling Bee” was held (the 100-seater Gonzaga Fine Arts Theater), its virtually unknown roster of performers and all-too-brief run under the media radar, it’s not farfetched to declare it as one of the least-watched musicals of 2007.

We saw that show once and the Atlantis version twice. We’re constrained to report that the pros at RCBC Theater, while expert actors overall, can learn a thing or two from their student counterparts in the matter of, in theater critic Charles Isherwood’s words, “the usually ghastly conceit of adult actors playing kids.”

Advantage
The Ateneo college kids, it can be conceded, enjoyed the existential advantage of being closer to the ages of the tween characters they portrayed. Perhaps the sweaty, desperate spelling tests of classrooms past were still seared fresh on their minds; perhaps the stress of time-bound competition struck greater urgency in young actors still ruled--like spelling contestants--by the bell.

Whatever the reason, BlueRep’s “Spelling Bee,” technically sparse and no-frills as it was, oddly intruded on the mind as we watched the bright, sleek, altogether lively version Garcia has mounted.

That static stems from a shortage--subtle, but there it is--of something the Ateneo staging had otherwise offered in copious doses: guilelessness, purity--the absence of any distancing self-consciousness.

Take Everley. This teddy bear of an actor is afire in the juicy part of the prickly schlub William Barfee, which is well-served by his big voice and fine comic timing. As he goes through his paces, however, Everley never sinks into character, his outsize showman’s flair forever peeking through the artificial accumulation of tics and gestures he deploys with obvious deliberateness.

This is, in short, a performance--striking in volume and command of space, but lacking the spontaneity of fine-grained characterization.

Low-key
Everley’s broad strokes--can you spell h-a-m-m-y?--wouldn’t be in such high relief if his co-actors didn’t go the opposite--more low-key, naturalistic--manner.

Even as they tackle equally freakish characters, the three girls--Baranda (in a welcome return to the local stage after her Hong Kong Disneyland stint) as the lisp-afflicted, pigtails-wearing Logainne Schwartzandgrubenniere (her early take on the word strabismus is a hoot), Tadiar as the frighteningly gifted Marcy Park, and Guevara-Laforteza as the wallflower Olive Ostrovsky--offer grounded portrayals that emphasize character over surface quirks.

Guevara-Laforteza’s number, “The I Love You Song,” sung with Rayos and Azanza-Dy doubling as her absent parents, is hauntingly delivered. A lament on sparse parental love cleverly set off against the word Olive has to spell (chimerical), its peak three-part harmony lends the show a grown-up mournful moment, even with Rayos’ top notes tending to go wayward.

Madcap
Dela Fuente plays a nimble if cutesy hand with his Leaf Coneybear character, while Rivera, an actor of glowing leading-man chops as was showcased in Atlantis’ previous “Avenue Q,” seems pinched, tamped down as Chip Tolentino. He, too, isn’t quite convincing as a straitlaced kid wrestling with runaway puberty.

What the fresh-faced Ateneo actors brought to these parts, if memory serves us right, was a raw blend of exultant energy and fancy-free acting that made the proceedings goofier, more madcap and farcical. Their singing, especially Laura Cabochan’s as the emcee Rona Lisa Peretti, wasn’t middling, either.

Seeing Atlantis’ “Spelling Bee” on its own offers brisk pleasures; seeing it side by side with the memory of another show that did its business better, at least in one key respect, tempers that pleasure, frames it in perspective. That is, perhaps, the curse that promiscuous theatergoers like us must deal with.

Stylish
This “Spelling Bee” does scale stylish comic heights with its improvised spiels introducing guest star spellers.

The lovely Agot Isidro, for instance, came onstage clad in fearsome stilettos. Whereupon Azanza-Dy announced: “Ms Isidro believes in the saying ‘The higher the heels, the better the speller.’”

The venerable actor-director Leo Rialp, for his part, was asked to spell elderly. When he gamely requested its use in a sentence, the reliably funny Trinidad tossed out this helpful tidbit: “The gentleman thought that by wearing jeans and stripes, he wouldn’t look elderly. He was wrong.”

Rialp was dressed in jeans and stripes. He got the word right, to cheers from the crowd.

For tickets to Atlantis Productions’ “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” call 8927078, 8401187 or 8919999. Visit atlantisproductionsinc.com

We walked the pilgrim path to Santiago de Compostela

Philippine Daily Inquirer, 02.29.2009


NOT THE ENTIRE 100-km stretch, the minimum requirement for one to register as a peregrino or pilgrim (200 km if one is on bike or horse).

Our Spanish hosts merely wanted us to get a feel of the centuries-old Camino de Santiago tradition, a central part of the history of Spain and European Christendom. So we copped out at 5 km--still about three hours’ walking from Melite to Boente, along the famed French Way (Camino Frances) that usually starts from the Pyrenees and takes about three to four months to complete by foot, before exhausted but gratified pilgrims can finally glimpse the spires of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela at the heart of the medieval town.


Last year was a watershed year for Santiago, the most visited destination in Galicia, in northern Spain. For the first time in centuries of ceaseless traffic to this holy site, there were more foreign pilgrims than Spanish: The ratio was 58-42 percent, said our guide.

Of some six million tourists, about 180,000 had come as declared pilgrims to the age-old cult of St. James the Apostle. His remains, it is believed, are kept in a crypt under the altar of the massive cathedral shrine that bears his name. Next year, a Jubilee Year, that number is expected to reach 250,000.


Majority of visitors still come for religious purposes. A pilgrimage to Santiago, the third most important site in Christianity after Rome and Jerusalem, gains one plenary indulgences.

But many now also come for cultural reasons. The Santiago Apostol mission, after all, dates back to some 1,200 years. Unesco has declared the town a World Heritage site, and the pilgrimage route itself is considered a European cultural treasure.

Creative
Pilgrims may come from anywhere in the world, as long as they end up in Santiago. People traditionally take to the road starting April, to make it in time for the feast of St. James on July 25.

Whichever ancient European route they take, they can make stops at numerous refugios (inns) along the way for rest, nourishment and the all-important sello (stamp) on a “passport” they need to present once they reach Santiago. With these stamps, the Church will issue a compostela--a document in Latin in use since the Middle Ages--certifying to the pilgrim status of the visitors.

Because walking on foot can be exhausting, some young pilgrims have become creative. Recently, said our guide Manuel, two kids skated all the way from Navarre, Spain, and reached Santiago in nine days.

Our own 5-km hike took us through dirt roads, hamlets, brooks, sparsely populated farms--the backwoods of the city. Road signs etched with the scallop, a central image in the Santiago Apostol iconography, pointed the way.


Many pilgrim roads have remained unpaved and distinct from urban arteries. Deliberately so, explained Manuel, so that the journey’s authentic character is preserved and not homogenized for modern touristy purposes.

Is it safe to walk along these unlighted rural areas? Yes, though no one really treks at night--“except some crazy Germans who strap on helmets with lights and try to find their way in the dark!” he said, chuckling.

Landmark
Pilgrims taking the Camino Frances will inevitably find their way to a landmark stop--Monte do Gozo, or Mount of Joy, a promontory outside the city which offers the first view of Santiago and the cathedral towers. Tradition says the first pilgrim to glimpse the spires will then lead the others in joyous song.


From here, it’s only a couple more hours of walking to reach Ground Zero of their quest--the 17th-century cathedral whose oldest parts date back to 1075, and the expansive courtyard in front of it, called Plaza de Obradoido. If they still have the energy for it--and 10 euros--pilgrims can climb the cathedral roof for a breathtaking view of the landscape they had just crossed.

Facing the church is another historic building, now the town hall adorned with four flags representing Santiago, Spain, Galicia and the European Union.

On one side of it is the rectorado, in olden times a dormitory for students of the town’s university; and, on the other, a 16th-century hospital for pilgrims, now converted into a five-star hotel. Pilgrims staggering into the plaza can still get a hot meal from the hotel.


We didn’t reach the church square by foot. By 12 noon, hot and famished (lunch in Spain is at 2 p.m.), we ducked into a bar, got samples of the Camino stamp on tissue paper, and rode the van home. Never mind the pilgrim tag; we’d take plain “tourists” for now.


Thai Airways flies from Manila to Spain (Madrid) via Bangkok three times a week (departing Manila Monday, Wednesday and Friday). For bookings, call 8175442/8124812 or e-mail sales@thaiairways.com.ph.

PLUS: An abandoned house along the pilgrim route. Note the “Animo La Salle” graffiti on the wall.