Chinese chop suey and other concoctions

At the beginning of this new year, three plays were offered to theater lovers to rid themselves of the post-holiday blues — Repertory Philippines’ God’s Favorite, Tanghalang Pilipino’s Ang Sinungaling and the Philippine High School for the Arts’ Ondine.

One writer who never seems to suffer from writer’s cramp is Neil Simon. Give this playwright any material – a cough syrup formula, the classified ads, Webster’s dictionary – and I bet you he can concoct a Pulitzer Prize winner out of it. Look at what he did with the Bible. Call it blasphemy if you will, but God’s Favorite is a farce that draws its idea from the Book of Job. Trust a Jew and a Jewish sense of humor to transport Job to Long Island, New York in the 20th century and replay in modern dress the game played between God and the Devil to test Job’s faith.

We know of the might of God’s wrath – of the anger that banished Adam and Eve from Eden, that marked the face of Cain, that toppled the topless tower of Nimrod’s Babel, that demolished Sodom and Gomorrah in a rain of fire and brimstone, and that sent down the Deluge. But just as fearsome is God’s love, which tested the faith of Abraham by demanding the sacrifice of his son, and of Job who has made to suffer all manner of calamities. Only a Jew and a Neil Simon can make a comedy out of Job’s misery. And trust directors Baby Barredo and Michael Williams, whose funny-bones are Jewish to deliver all the laughs, no holds barred.

The play begins with the burglar alarm going off in the dead of night in the mansion of millionaire Joe Benjamin (Miguel Faustmann) in a fashionable suburb of Long Island. Son Ben (Topper Fabregas) and twin sister Sarah (Myrene Hernandez) find their father up and about sleuthing around the 19-room house for the intruder. Joe is annoyed no end by his daughter’s excitement over the thought that the thief might also be a rapist. His wife, Rose (Jay Valencia-Glorioso; alternate Anna Liza Zialcita) is also awake but, because she has her ear-plugs on, she has no idea of what’s going on. The servants, Mady (Liesl Batucan) and Morris (Meynard Peñalosa; alternate Lorenz Martinez), have also been roused from sleep by the commotion.

It turns out that the house-breaker is only David (Martinez; alternate Arnel Carrion), the prodigal son, home from a drinking spree. Having lost his keys, he tries to break into the house through the French window and sets off the alarm. The young man gets a dressing down from his father who tells him about his impoverished childhood, the sacrifice of his mother and his gradual rise to fortune through hard labor, all of which fall on deaf ears.

After everyone else has gone to bed, Joe stays on in the living room lying in wait for one more intruder, one who has lost his eyeglasses in the balcony. This person turns out to be Sidney Lipton (Jeremy Domingo) from Queens, but who is in reality God’s messenger. Sidney warns Joe to prepare for Satan’s scheme to torment him to the point that he will renounce God. Soon enough, the Devil begins to inflict on God’s favorite all sorts of ailment. A terrible itch all over his body sends him into spasms — and this is only for starters. There’s much more to come, Sidney assures him — hemorrhoids, neuralgia, tennis elbow, lumbago and what have you. His mansion goes up in flames, his business is ruined and his wife and children abandon him in his misery but he is steadfast in his faith.

It’s a wonder how Simon can make a farce out of all these calamities, but he does, and it’s a riot. Faustmann is absolutely awesome as Joe Benjamin. His latter-day Job opens your tear ducts at the same time that he makes you laugh your head off and cry uncle. If that is not acting, I don’t know what is.

Close at his heels, Domingo goes to town as Sidney Lipton and Martinez as young David is not far behind.

God’s Favorite runs weekends the first two weeks of February at the Carlos P. Romulo Theater, RCBC Plaza along Ayala Ave.

Over at Tanghalang Huseng Batute, CCP, the attraction these last two weekends of January has been Carlo Goldoni’s Ang Sinungaling, a production of Tanghalang Pilipino.

Director Nonon Padilla works his wizardry to transport Goldoni’s Venice and conventions of the commedia dell’arte and comedia erudate to the exotic realm of Beijing opera (sans the music and the feline vocalism) and tai chi. The effect is visually stunning – a dazzling spectacle in gleaming Chinese red. However, the concept goes far beyond being merely a visual delight. It is a commentary on the Tsinoy culture of contemporary Philippine society.

In his Director’s Notes, Padilla raises the following questions: "The Chinese in our history have generally integrated harmoniously into the fabric of our national existence. Today, with their ever increasing or now perhaps overwhelming presence in the economic and political life of the nation, might it not mean a shift in cultural norm as well? Witness the rise of the new Chinese bourgeoisie so alive and so vibrant in Greenhills, San Juan. Might this not be portents of the signification of Philippine society, a radical shift from the mestizo culture of European and American tangential roots to the cultural takeover worldwide of Red China?"

Over in San Francisco (which incidentally has the biggest Chinatown in the world), I overheard an American staring at my chinky eyes telling his companion, "Do you know that a hundred years from now the whole world will be Chinese?"

He might well have been the same scum-bag who, after his wife gave him nine children, had himself vasectomized because he had heard that every tenth baby born in the world was Chinese.

The Chinese in our Far Eastern isles have certainly gone a long way, from the days of Limahong and the other pirates, who crossed the China Sea in their fast-moving junks, to Lucio Tan and his fellow taipans. In my childhood, the intsik went around the neighborhood buying empty bottles, bote garapa or peddling taho. Today, he owns the malls. Trust the Confucian ethical and political values to guarantee success in the world of business.

As a matter of fact, courtship, love and marriage are all part of business too, as Ang Sinungaling shows.

Lelio (Boboy Garrovillo), Florindo (Paolo O’Hara), Ottavio (McDo Bollanos) and Lelio’s servant Arlechino (George De Jesus III) roam around Venice during Carnival for the females they fancy. Florindo falls in love with Rosaura (Rossana Ordoñez) and Ottavio with Beatrice (Tes Jamias), but Lelio becomes the fly in the ointment when he dines with the sisters and compromises their relationships with their respective suitors. He feeds them lies about his real identity to advance his sinister intention, which is, like that of Don Juan, to get into their skirts. In the meantime, Arlechino has eyes only for the sisters’ maid, Columbina (Diana Alferez).

The arrival of the girls’ father, Balanzoni (Ian Lomongo), and Lelio’s own father, Pantalone (Roeder Camanag), brings further complications and, at the same time, leads to the resolution. At the end, all the lovers are paired off properly, even Lelio who gets his come-uppance for his dastardly shenanigans when the fat leather-sadist of a wife Cleonice (Len Ag Santos) he fled from – a Roman virago of enormous bulk – catches up with him and gives him a sound thrashing.

This production of Ang Sinungaling is outrageously funny and this is no fib.

The third play is the Philippine High School for the Arts and Dulaang Sipat-Lawin’s romantic fantasy, Ondine. The production staged at the CCP Little Theater will surely make Jean Giraudaux turn in his grave. I need say no more for fear that the people responsible for this travesty of this French modern classic will skin me alive.