A shattered dream comes alive onstage

Carlos Bulosan must have written The Romance of Magno Rubio with his blood. He was slowly dying of tuberculosis and was given by a doctor only five years to live. In his autobiographical book America Is in the Heart, we find this dialogue between Carlos and his brother Macario (p.161):

"I don’t want to die yet," I told Macario. "I would like to tell the story of our life in America. I remember vividly how you described our fate: ‘It’s a great wrong that a man should be hungry and illiterate and miserable in America. Yes, yes, it is a great wrong. Maybe I could write it down for all the world to see’."

American playwright Lonnie Carter, who based his play on Bulosan’s short story, has encapsulated with throbbing realism the misery of the Filipino migrant worker in America, specifically in California during the Depression years. He has captured his loneliness, hopelessness and despair, the drudgery and tedium of his existence from which there seems no escape. The set of the play, currently being staged at the CCP basement theater, is a "bunkhouse" where the workers’ prison-like existence is eloquently symbolized by the barbed wires – fronting it.

From his wretched, humdrum life of fruit and vegetable-picking, the gentle, good-natured, illiterate Magno Rubio is determined to escape, having built a dream around Clarabelle, his lady love from Arkansas, whose name he found in a lonely-hearts magazine.

The courtship of Miles Standish, so to speak, is carried on through letters written by Nick, the group’s poet and intellectual who, along with the other workers, has lone realized that Magno is being duped and led on by Clarabelle. To heighten suspense and mystery, Clarabelle never appears; she is impersonated offstage by one of the pickers namely Atoy who, reading her letters aloud, exposes her opportunism.

Genuine affection and concern for Magno may be readily discerned through the raucous jeering and taunting of his co-workers. But as the Bard would intone here, "Love is blind", and Magno obstinately refuses to view, as reckless and impetuous, his spending of hard-earned money on Clarabelle.

When the two finally meet, only her silhouette is shown behind a screen, the ingenious theatrical device thus lending subtle credence to his shattered dream or illusion.

The plot can’t be more simple. (At the meet-the-cast party, Mr. Carter told me Bulosan’s short story runs to only ten pages!) As the play sparkles and bristles, it grips the audience from start to finish. Credit for the standing ovation must be fanned out, of course, to Mr. Carter who has dramatized, and given bone and sinew to Bulosan’s Asian-American experience while faithfully conveying the Filipino character, identity and amusing idiosyncrasies; to brilliant director — set designer Loy Arcenas whose revisions and tight integration of choreographic movement, song, dramatic action and dialogue produce a compelling, powerful impact, and not the least, to the excellent cast. Each is so convincing that at the aforementioned meet-the-cast party, I started to chat in Tagalog with Jojo Gonzalez, the magnificently dejected, disillusioned Magno momentarily taking him to be truly illiterate!

Similarly persuasive in their intense, vibrant interaction with each other are Arthur Topacio Acuña (the intellectual Nick), Ramon de Ocampo (Atoy/ the artful Clarabelle), Ron Domingo (Prudencio) and Antonio del Rosario (Claro) who both deepen the play’s native ambiance.

Mention should also be made of artistic designer-lyricist Ralph B. Peña, movement coach Kristin Jackson, guitarist Roldan Lozano and music director Fabian Obispo. It was the tremendous concerted effort that led the 85-minute play Romance of Magno Rubio to garner the Obie award off-Broadway. (Recall the recent Broadway revival of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night which lasts over four hours!)

Not to be overlooked in the credits is Jorge Ortoll, executive producer who has made The Romance of Magno Rubio and other May-i productions in New York possible. The play will go on a US tour. Even if you have to steal a ticket, go see it!

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Giving added meaning to the Asian-American experience on opening night were CCP Chairman Baltazar Endriga, US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone and Public Affairs Counselor Ronald Post who each gave a few remarks (in that order) on the significant, joint theatrical venture.