Finding love, betrayal & forgiveness in Fourplay

What’s with love that makes people feel at home? And once found — or given — the recipient of love becomes whole, sprightly, inspired, insulated somehow from the follies and foibles of the world.

But what happens when love is not found? Worse, when it is not felt or received or returned?

A mother’s love is intrinsic in the growth of her child. A father’s acceptance of his son’s sexual preference is indicative of the filial piety they will share. A couple’s tale of love remains rosy when romance is kept exclusive. A servant’s love to his master is the badge of honor the former will keep — till death do them part.

In essence, these thoughts make up each of the four one-act plays that is collectively called Fourplay, an all-original production of the UPLB Com Arts Society, the official organization of the Department of Humanities, which co-produced the stage plays. These one-act plays were recently shown at the New College of Arts and Sciences (NCAS) Auditorium of UP Los Baños.

Fourplay is an all-student initiative — from the playwrights to the actors, from the stage managers to the directors. The UPLB Com Arts Society and all the students behind the production mount the four one-act plays (Paperclip, Lipstick, Reunion and Ang Huling Rekado ni Emyong) not as a school requirement but merely for their artistic desire. And if the seemingly unending applause for each play would be the barometer for the success of the theater production, the minimalist Fourplay ought to have a repeat and should get the support of the UPLB community. But let me not get ahead of my story.

Paperclip, written by Tabitha Jules Cariaga and directed by Paul Sargei Azurin, is an ode to the travails and triumphs of OFWs and the loved ones they leave behind. It tells about the story of Jessi, a young woman left by her mother when she was still very young. After almost 20 years, she receives news that her mother is coming back from abroad and Jessi has to wrestle with her own emotions. Part of her does not want to see her again because she is already used to her mother’s absence. But somewhere in her heart she is longing for a mother’s love albeit she finds it very difficult to trust and love again. Her problem, in the eyes of many, may be as light as a paperclip but to someone who carries the pain like Jessi, the dilemma is akin to loose leaves of a notepad trying to escape from the bite of a paperclip that durably yet painfully bound them together. It doesn’t help Jessi’s situation that her former lover is trying another take for a comeback romance.

Though at times the play meanders laboriously in the discussion of its narrative, Paperclip picks up to become a bomb of beautiful and poignant realizations in the process. As scars of the past are softened and painful memories are blurred, love surely reigns in the end. But for a price.

Lipstick is organized chaos that results in finding beauty in pain and pain in beauty. The plot revolves around a young gay character named Pepai who splits in mid-air like a half-trained ballerina and talks like a spitfire. On his birthday, he joins a beauty contest in the neighborhood to fulfill his wish — to put on his red lipstick. Beyond that, however, he wishes for his father’s acceptance of his alternative lifestyle.

It’s both endearingly and annoyingly raucous many times but methinks it is the point of the play to bring peace and disorder in the hearts and minds of the audience. But one thing is for sure, Lipstick characters will make you laugh because the play delivers a good laugh-tear feeling that makes you wish the gaiety in the play wouldn’t end.

Lipstick is both comedy and tragedy — and throughout the 30 minutes it is shown, a real coffin is imposingly present on center stage. The coffin symbolizes the death of societal homophobia and the birth of an everlasting life and happiness — for Pepai.

The script of Lipstick is ingeniously written by Oscar John Bartolome and deftly helmed by Clarence Joy de Guzman. The dialogues are written in 80-percent baklese (gay lingo) to the delight of the audience who fully understand the language.

Reunion is a stirring psychological ménage à trois penned by Pol Singson and directed by Foxy Enriquez and Tracy Quila. It talks about a dysfunctional relationship between Leon and his wife Jean-Marie and the involvement of their former classmate Colette in their lives. As the play reveals skeletons in the closet, it proves that betrayal is virulent and fatal.

The mind-boggling script of Reunion is treated by the directors with blatant erudition and deliberate inanity. It is this polarity that makes the play riveting, risky and risqué. The “tempest” in Reunion needs to be tempered but then again it is the play’s being uninhibited that makes it real and raw.

Ang Huling Rekado ni Emyong has in its recipe a large dose of black humor. Though it feels circuitous at times, the play manages to hold its ground. The story revolves around Emyong, a funeral home owner, whose only desire is to bring back to life his dead wife Maria. He accomplishes his wish — though in a relatively long, tedious exposition — by concocting his own recipe of potion with his bumbling funeral assistant whose simplicity and sincerity of heart works to his detriment. It is both funny and uncanny how the lifeless Maria is treated like a bunraku doll by her cuckoo husband Emyong as he dances with her in his attempt to make her alive again. What ensues is a series of macabre scenes in a seemingly comical treatment but with a whip of subversive language.

Written by Oscar John Bartolome and directed by Pol Singson, Ang Huling Rekado ni Emyong shows that love is eternal. It also proves that one can dupe the living but one cannot cheat death.

Fourplay is about the simplicity and complexity of human relationships. It is a collective tale of love — pure, sincere, simple, selfish, complicated. It is the kind of love that is regimented by fear, because fear is also part of love. It is also not without betrayal, because betrayal is a by-product of love  that has gone remiss of its essence. Love is not love, if we follow the common thread of Fourplay, unless it is subjected to the tests of times. At the end of each test, remorse and forgiveness, spoken or unspoken, are found. Photos by Daniel Richard Sta. Romana

(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. I’m on Twitter, too, @bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday!)