Nothing so Cinderella about Insiang

The first thing that grabs you about the stage adaptation of Insiang is the stage itself. When I entered the CCP’s Tanghalang Huseng Batute, I thought I had strayed into a piece of slum inferno with the obligatory sampayan, sari-sari store, girlie posters, gin bulag bottles, Virgin Marys, panties, plastic basins, etc. The only thing missing, wisecracked the person beside me, was the stench. (Yes, the slum’s pestilential smell that clings to one’s skin and nostrils with a nameless ferocity.) Good work from director Chris Millado as well as set-and-costume designer Hesus Lota.

Even the characters are squatters’ area archetypes: the abusive barangay tanod (Dado), the spaced-out addict (Atoy), the unflappable tsismosa (Toyang), the happy-go-lucky tambay (Danny) and the sweet-painted ladies, among others. The very people in our own neighborhoods.

Insiang was written by Mario O’Hara as a teleplay in 1973 for a Lino Brocka-directed TV series called Hilda, which featured the young Hilda Koronel. It was adapted into a movie three years later for the 1976 Manila Film Festival and quickly became a celluloid classic. What to make of Tanghalang Pilipino’s stage version of Insiang almost three decades after it first appeared as a teleplay? Well, it is still a moving pageant about an innocent girl and her transformation into a scheming, malevolent woman. These days, nothing could be more timely than this tabloidish tale. Very TV Patrol.

Insiang (newcomer Sheenly Vee Gener) is the only child of Pacing (the versatile Malou de Guzman), a widowed market vendor. They live in a Pasay shanty with Pacing’s despicable lover Dado, who has the hots for Insiang. Now, a word about Ricky Davao who essays the role of evil Dado.

We’re used to seeing Davao in movies and soap TV. In the big screen, he usually plays villain with a posse of leather – and denim-jacketed thugs; on TV, he does the same roles minus the gang of bores, of course. The antagonist in theater, generally, has more depth and is more complex. And Ricky was able to deliver the goods as Dado, playing larger-than-life scum to the hilt, even doing the masturbation scene with gusto. You get the feeling Davao is freer and less constrained on the stage. (Maybe because theater is the actor’s medium, according to actor/comedian Leo Martinez.)

But the scene-stealer for me is Toyang played wonderfully by Mae Paner. She is the squatter sage who comments on each of the characters, communicates directly to the audience and dishes out a few jokes every now and then. She, along with others in this godforsaken barangay, nurses her own pain: her husband abandoned her long ago and her son is stricken with polio. But these mishaps do not dampen her flair for the comic. A little batty, she even sings Labadami, Labango in one scene and tells the audience that what they’re witnessing is nothing but a soap opera.

Toyang is too intrusive at times, though. Just when your starting to be moved by Insiang and her many misfortunes, the Doña Buding-like character comes along and cracks the audience up.

Dado rapes Insiang, and Pacing sides with her lustful lover (who claims he was seduced) rather than believe her own daughter. The first betrayal. She asks Danny, her boyfriend, to take her away from all this. Danny abandons her in a friend’s house after getting his way with Insiang. The second betrayal. Thus begins Insiang’s yearning for revenge.

At this point, we’re supposed to see Insiang’s transformation from naive girl into a nefarious woman, seamlessly, just like what Hilda Koronel did with the character, just like in real life. Gener did good in the role. Except for a few scenes wherein she trades barbs with De Guzman in that whiny, nasal voice of hers.

All in all, you just have to give props to this stage adaptation of Insiang. It’s one of those plays that talk to us in our own language – complete with references to body parts and sexual acts, as well as generous helpings of the P-word. (I don’t know where "P__anginamo!" is uttered more: in Insiang or in a Cheese concert.)

What I like about Insiang is that Mario O’Hara does away with the gloss and the artifice, and instead presents a realistic, even expressionistic, portrayal of reality. It’s a warts-and-all type of play. It’s a modern day un-fairy tale. Yes, it may be nothing but a soap opera on stage, as Toyang dismisses, but it’s a soap opera that’s happening in a slum area near you.