Orosman at Zafira will rock your world

Because this is an engaging, riveting musicale, with fantastic live music, contemporary choreography and great great singing, a display of classy and intelligent Pinoy talent. Because it is all local art and culture, in the form of a classic Francisco Baltazar aka Balagtas komedya. The Orosman at Zafira that unfolded before me was 90 percent of the original Balagtas text, the language beautiful even when it seemed unfamiliar, even as it sounded like something I’ve had in the back of my head, even as it seemed to roll off my tongue. Because this language, these words, became mine. This musical reconfigured Orosman at Zafira for the times, melding rakenrol and dance music, bound together by Carol Bello’s opus that can only be neo-ethnic world music. Here, the music is nothing but Pinoy, and the search for real original Pilipino music is so over. This music didn’t just make for dancing on stage, it also felt like music under my skin. In the hands of our best musicians, the rhythms seemed ingrained in me, beats as familiar as the back of my hand. The soul was exactly like mine.

Because given this music and despite the language, Orosman at Zafira is in a form that isn’t at all overwhelming, even when it’s far from simple. A grasp of the complex story’s multiple characters is made possible by the colors of each of the three tribes’ costumes. As the story evolves, so do the colors that certain characters wear, so do the way some of the characters look, changing from this tale’s versions of royalty to dirtied and chained victims of endless war. Granted there is nothing logical about the red tassels on the costumes; nor did it make sense that what symbolize Orosman’s success in battle were armbands that had too much bling; these are forgivable considering what else is in this musical. Because there is war, one that begins with the killing of a leader, and becomes about the endless cycle of revenge and power. Yes, in 1857, Balagtas knew Filipino politics like no other. He also knew of romance. With nation for one, and with unity for another. With kingdoms and families and tribes. With notion(s) of peace and war, love and hate. When you sit through Orosman at Zafira you realize soon enough that it isn’t simply about the romance between the two lead characters, as it is about their romance with the relationships they are born into, the persons they are to begin with. Yet this isn’t all that there is. Because here, the female leads take over the show, regardless of the roles that are default, as daughter and wife to the Sultan Mahamud. Zafira and Gulnara change quickly and find reason for battle. They evolve and become warriors. Two women warriors pre-Maxine Hong Kingston, thank you very much, who both sacrifice romantic love for the objects of their desire, Orosman and Aldervesin respectively, as both men become enemies, too. This complexity is dealt with wonderfully by the kind of direction and movement -- dance and otherwise -- that the characters were given to portray emotional turmoil and inner struggle. Because there is nothing superficial or shallow or cliché about love here, nothing at all that makes it seem like stuff for soap operas. This isn’t what you might think when you see that title, a story of impossible love, a love story we’ve seen before. Instead it’s love at its most raw, the kind that’s about desire on the one hand, and destruction on the other. It’s that kind of love that’s rarely talked about because it isn’t at all romantic by current standards, nor does it look pretty. Instead it takes the perspective of love as a matter of fact: like the existence of a table or of pain, a fact that need not be acted on for it to exist. Pag-ibig. Pag-ibig. Pag-ibig pa rin. So it is repeated in Orosman at Zafira. Because there is love always. As it is love that’s at the core of the found need for a continuing war, as it is love for parent and kingdom and tribe that is reason for battle among individuals. It is love that will bring anger and violence here. But if love isn’t a cliché, even less so is war. Choreography by Dexter M. Santos works at making violence and anger all about strong dancing that isn’t at all simply tribal ethnic dances as expected. Instead there’s street dance and break dance, a whole lot of hip-hop interspersed with the grace of jazz and power of ethnic dance. Choreographed shouts go wonderfully with the dancing, which is always and necessarily in tune with the live music of war. All in all, a sight to behold, a feast for the ears, the best representation of war I’ve seen in a local context in a long long time, if not ever. Because there are no cheap shots here, no scenes that exist for the sake of. Instead there is restraint in the romantic, there is control in the crazy war. Instead we are given a fast-paced story of Orosman and Zafira, of the kingdoms they belong to, of the war it suffers through. There is no dragging moment, no stretch of time onstage that seems pointless or irrelevant. Save for a fiberglass moon that might be mistaken for everything other than a moon, there is nothing onstage that is extraneous to what’s going on in the story. Everything has rhyme and reason for being, everything seems to be what Balagtas had imagined it almost two centuries ago. Because Dexter M. Santos’ direction and choreography seem to allow freedom for the actors onstage and the musicians rocking it out, at the same time that there is obvious restraint in scenes that could have easily been made into a spectacle, including an overtly extravagant, cancan production number that would’ve been far from classy. The production design by Tuxqs Rutaquio suffered only in the hands of those who handled it throughout the musical: literally, too many hands were seen shaking and moving the rolling platforms filled with long stalks. These were crucial to the sounds and movements on the stage -- creating a garden, a room, a prison -- but it needs to be handled differently if not consistently, with no hands showing really, distracting as that can be. The same goes for those who roll the high platforms across the stage, the ones that function as both entrance to and prison itself, especially because these scenes are highly charged quiet ones, where the slightest movements are obvious. Because there are many of these scenes too: the touching and heartfelt, the ones on romantic love, desire and possibility. Even when it’s still wrapped around the idea of change and revolt, of taking responsibility for both. The komedya is captured here and made into a new form altogether, one that isn’t about the form used by the Spanish colonizer to inculcate easy notions of good and evil through warring kingdoms, as it is about myth-making in the hands of Balagtas, in the context of the present. Here and now, the komedya becomes ours, those characters our own particular archetypes, those warring tribes make sense. Watching Orosman at Zafira becomes imperative. Because here we are treated to some great Pinoy talent. With direction and choreography, music and production, to Sir Anril Tiatco, Katherine Sabate and Patrick Valera who adapted the original text for the contemporary stage. These three knew what they were doing, handling the material with respect without falling into the trap of mere faithfulness and unfreedom. But of course it is the performers, young and old(er) who brought this text to life. Jay Gonzaga (Orosman) and Roeder Camañag (Abdalap), save for sloppy microphones, give sibling rivalry a good name here. Yet it wasn’t an easy good son-bad son dichotomy, as it was the complexity of two different machismos: one that loves and one that covets, one who is selfless and one who thirsts for power. The brutal end of this brotherhood is also the highpoint for Camañag here, whose character evolution happens seamlessly onstage. Nazer Salcedo (Bousalem) plays the sultan role but actually does it on the level of being father to both Orosman and Abdalap. The distinct emotional struggle of being sultan and patriarch, of wanting to gain power and keep control of one’s children, happens ably in the hands of Salcedo. But as with the manner in which the characters unfold in this musical, the women take on the men here too, if not take over the stage. Because Orosman at Zafira’s got Tao Aves (Zelima) as the storyteller who’s also within the story, who evolves slowly but perfectly into the daughter whose father is killed in the war she was telling. Aves‘ voice was flawless and consistent that night, her bright big eyes that moved from melancholy to anger, a presence in itself. Jean Judith Javier (Gulnara) ably and swiftly shifted from wife to mistress, mother and slave, to woman warrior, with nary a questionable act, not one moment of uncertainty in her voice or actions. That voice, by the way, is one that can give plenty of our so-called divas a run for their money, with Javier taking on the higher registers when singing with the chorus. She did it flawlessly, too. The same may be said of Maita Angeli Ponce (Zafira), whose evolution from innocent girl singing in the garden to daughter-warrior avenging her father’s murder might have been easy to imagine, but in Ponce’s hands meant complexity and struggle. What is ultimately skillful about Ponce’s work here is that her voice, be it spoken or in song, resonated with the struggle between love for Orosman and revenge for her father, echoed with both lost innocence and found independence. Ponce looks young onstage, but it works perfectly with the role of Zafira. The same may be said of her voice, the sweetness of which belies the strength that shines through in the midst of a band and the chorus. There is obviously no reason to miss Orosman at Zafira eh? Because if you’re the kind of parent who will spend good money for your kids to watch Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars; if you yourself would go out and watch that new Hollywood blockbuster in 3D or buy that original DVD of an American series, you should allow Orosman at Zafira to surprise you. It’s value for money that isn’t just about entertainment or spectatorship; it’s value for money that’s about watching a local classical text, on high-energy youthful drugs with a contemporary spin. It’s value for money that’s about seeing how successful original music can still be, about how Pinoy talent can still be different from what we know from commercialized TV and cinema, about how a bigger stage can only mean talents being freed in countless ways. It also means that in the hands of a competent Pinoy production, we can only become a proud Pinoy audience. - GMA News Orosman at Zafira is presented by Dulaang UP and SM Cinema, and Atty. Darwin Mariano is executive producer. It runs all Fridays of February with 8PM shows, and all Saturdays of February with 10AM (except for the 26th), 3PM and 8PM shows, at the Centerstage Theater, 2/F SM Mall of Asia. Tickets are available at www.smtickets.com. Additional information at http://www.orosmanatzafira.com.