A legacy of good taste

MANILA, Philippines - Good taste. That was the tenor of the necrological tribute to National Artist Salvador “Badong” Bernal at the Cultural Center of the Philippines last Saturday morning. It was but a fitting tribute to one who had lived by the principles of good taste.

Bernal had an angioplasty last September and was recovering in his house. He had begun designing the sets and costumes for PETA’s new production of King Lear and was slated to return to teaching at the Ateneo de Manila when he died of a heart attack last Oct. 26.

Taste — a sense of proportion and delicacy, the knack for discerning what’s “just right,” what’s poised between suggestion and statement, lack and excess. It is that which has characterized his works. Bernal left a legacy of some three hundred productions for television, the movies, and the stage. His name is associated less with showbiz than with the legitimate theater. (It’s another Bernal, a fellow National Artist, who occupies a bigger space in the collective memory of Philippine entertainment.) But in an industry that easily lends itself to excess — to a breach of good taste, in other words — this Bernal also left his mark, especially in the ’70s and ’80s. He designed costumes — always historically accurate — for the principal characters of the movies Aguila (1979), Gumising Ka, Maruja (1979), Oro, Plata, Mata (1980), Bona (1980) and Virgin Forest (1982). Sharon Cuneta and Kuh Ledesma wore his gowns in a series of Lux commercials. (Sharon for Peach Lux and Kuh for White Lux. Remember those?) And Superstar Nora Aunor wore Bernal creations at her concerts. More recently, he sat as one of the judges at the Cinemalaya Film Festival, which some pundits claim is the new hope of a moribund film industry.

Bernal was also the designer to the stars when they occasionally crossed over from screen to stage. He turned Celeste Legaspi and Zsa Zsa Padilla into dowdy old maids in Larawan (1997), the musical based on Nick Joaquin’s play. (Incidentally, it would be the final work of another giant in Philippine theater, Rolando Tinio.) Most recently, he outfitted Mark Bautista, who played Ibarra (alternating with Gian Magdangal) in the Ryan Cayabyab–Bienvenido Lumbera musical Noli Me Tangere. Kuh, whom he used to call “Kiukok Ledesma” (Bernal had a fine collection of Ang Kiukoks), wore his designs when she sang a medley at the PICC for an ASEAN convention. Scholar Nicanor Tiongson, author of Salvador F. Bernal Designing the Stage, vividly recalls the on-stage sleight-of-hand: “With every song, she had to change into the costume of that song’s country, which meant a total of six costumes and four costume changes. The only device used to mark the change of each costume/song/nation was a wide piece of cloth hanging from a pole that was carried by two costumed men on their shoulders, which masked the costume changes and enabled the assistants to ‘smuggle’ in and out articles of clothing as needed. Badong solved the problem through the miracle of Velcro and multiple layering.”

No wonder, then, that tribute after tribute (by Lumbera, Felipe de Leon Jr., Sonia Rocco, Alice Reyes, Nonon Padilla and Gino Gonzales) at the necrological emphasized Bernal’s ingenuity.

Given the limitations of Philippine theater (inadequate theater technology, budget cuts, etc.), one had to be inventive. How to overcome constrains without compromising quality? Alice Reyes recounted how Bernal made the sets for Carmen at one-third the projected cost. Bernal pioneered in using (and re-using) cheap, local materials — among these, “bamboo, raw abaca and abaca fiber, hemp twine, rattan chain links and gauze cacha” —to make sets and costumes, which when lit would look like the real deal: world-class sets at Third World costs.

Bernal could actually turn constraints to his advantage. In a production of Once on This Island, starring a then young Bituin Escalante, the stage — actually an auditorium platform — had room enough for only one set. Bernal made a batten. Over this he hung a piece of fabric which, depending on how it was lit and how far it was raised or lowered, suggested clouds, a canopy, or a rocky turf.

That’s another thing about his works — they’re never literal. He made audiences think, and in forcing their imagination to see connections where the literal eyes could not, he turned them into artists, too.

But what magic he could do when there was a full budget! In Magic Staff (starring legendary soprano Fides Cuyugan and Monique Wilson), the “earth” split open and a many-legged monster arose from the pit to do battle with the boy-hero. It was the equivalent of having a chandelier fall from the ceiling of the theater or of having a giant tire levitate in a junk yard full of dancing and singing cats.

At the tribute, Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino read a poem that Bernal had written for the late theater and food historian Doreen Fernandez in memory of her husband, decorator Wili Fernandez. (More people with good taste there.) The Philippine Madrigal Singers, conducted by Mark Anthony Carpio, sang a theme from Cayabyab and Lumbera’s Noli Me Tangere. Ballet Philippines performed an excerpt from Te Deum, whose set and costumes he designed when it was staged in 1985. Katrina Saporsantos, Ateneo alumna and now a soprano based in New York, sang Vissi d’arte, accompanied by Raul Sunico at the piano. The actors of Tanghalang Pilipino wheeled in some of the costumes that Bernal had designed for its various productions as the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (with Herminigildo Ranera conducting) played Verdi’s Ave Verum. As Bernal’s casket was being carried out of the main theater by honor guards, a choir, two-hundred voices strong, sang Oscar Escalada’s Candomble. Even stronger: the minute-long applause coming from Bernals’ family, friends, colleagues, apprentices, and admirers who had flocked to the Cultural Center to pay the man their final respects.

“He had taste,” declared his long-time collaborator Nonon Padilla in a eulogy that was itself an example of good taste. Bernal’s revels are now ended. One can only hope that the sending off was as stylish as what he deserved.