Manila Shakespeare Company

Cymbeline (2017)

Direction

Nicanor P. Campos

Cast

IMOGEN: Gabby Padilla
POSTHUMUS: Rico del Rosario
IACHIMO: Gio Gahol
CYMBELINE: Nicanor P. Campos
QUEEN: Christine Cojuangco
CLOTEN: Jiano Magdaraog
PISANIA: Miel Abong
BELARIUS: Ku Aquino
GUIDERIUS: Jonas Gruet
ARVIRAGUS: Zack Flynn

Review

Manila Shakespeare Company takes on the little-known ‘Cymbeline’

Walter Ang | Philippine Star

“You could say it’s excessively stuffed and convoluted… It draws from all over Shakespeare’s genres. It’s a bit of a mess, in fact. And that’s life, isn’t it? That’s exactly why I like it a lot. I like stuffed stories. I like challenging audiences to focus on several different plot threads,” says Campos.

Recycled plot devices or not, “Only this play has the different strains combined in this particular way. It creates an alchemy, a magic. And with the help of some judicious cuts and simplifications, we hope to offer that magic to the audience possibly for the first time [in Manila].”

---

Romeo and Juliet (2015)

Direction

Nicanor P. Campos

Review

‘Romeo and Juliet’–pleasant but tepid

Exie Abola | Philippine Daily Inquirer

By localizing the story the way it did, the company also inadvertently reinforced one of the play’s more pernicious ideas: that tragedies are only for the high-born. (Shakespeare, to be fair, had genre restrictions to deal with; in his time, tragedy was a literary form that demanded the use of kings, princes or generals as protagonists. His comedies are far more expansive. But no such limits apply to contemporary theater.)

To have done the play with the nurse as yaya and the servant as beki without irony, without sensitivity, without signaling awareness of the damage done in trading in these stereotypes, was to affirm ugly notions of class.

So no matter how appealing Katski Flores made her nurse, this isn’t  her story. It’s about her amo. Seen through the “national/community lens” the company provides, this “Romeo and Juliet” sent an unfortunate message: The lives of the upper crust matter more than those of others.

The people who gave shape to this production may be surprised to learn that most of the nation don’t look like Nelsito Gomez’s very tisoy Romeo or Rachel Coates’ very tisay Juliet. (Though, I imagine, many of us wish we did; one of our tragic flaws.) And where, except in small pockets in our cities, do we find youths wearing hoodies, blazers, skinny jeans and sneakers toting smartphones and speaking impeccable English?

Ultimately, the Manila Shakespeare Company’s localizing of “Romeo and Juliet” unwittingly valorized a very narrow stratum of society.

Photos

Photos from Manila Shakespeare Company Facebook page