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Despite my being an English Lit major wannabe I have yet to see a Shakespeare drama onstage, so I was really excited when Lorna Lopez (aka The Bachelor Girl) invited me to see Repertory Philippines’ Hamlet. Perhaps this is just me being a Shakespearean theater n00b, but I walked into Onstage Greenbelt expecting to see something like this:

Instead, what I got was this:

For a moment there I thought Ade and I had accidentally stumbled upon a Ragnarok cosplay event. Now, if I had done my homework and read up on the production, I wouldn’t have been too surprised by the post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk look donned by the actors. Repertory Philippines’ Hamlet is supposed to take place in a nameless world that - just like the play itself - has been “stripped to its core” (nevermind that I heard Denmark and England mentioned a couple of times in the dialogue). To quote the article from the Repertory Philippines website, “When stripped to its core, this immortal masterpiece, this most famous of Shakespeare’s plays, is really about greed, love, vengeance, passion: in short, all the ugly, hateful, beautiful, sordid things that make us human.”

Instead of tights, pointy shoes, and feathered hats, the characters wore leather jackets, goggles, and too many belts around their torso. In the place of a fancy palace set was rocks and a lot of sand.

Maybe this is just me being slightly disappointed about not seeing Elizabethan costumes on my very first Shakespearean theater experience. But I’d think that the audience can appreciate all the human emotions inherent in Hamlet (or the essence of Hamlet, if you will) through how the actors deliver their lines instead of what they wear. In that sense, Repertory Philippines’ Hamlet was very successful. Despite not being very familiar with Shakespearean English, it wasn’t too difficult for me to follow what was going on thanks to the actors’ fluid acting and distinct body language. Of course, it took some concentration for me to comprehend the nuances and the wordplay in the dialogue. But all you really need to do is pay attention, and you’ll get it. So first timers - you don’t have to be afraid of falling asleep in your chair or being completely lost in translation if you’ve never encountered a word of Shakespeare in your life. The actors will make it easy for you to follow the plot all the way to its tragic conclusion.

I do understand the need to “update” the costumes though. Hamlet has been done and redone for four hundred years and every production needs to add something new so the play doesn’t get stale. I still think Elizabethan costumes would have helped viewers contextualize the play, though. Don’t get me wrong - objectively speaking, I thought the costumes were fabulous. I’d wear that on a normal day if it were cold enough for boots and jackets here, but the costumes were little inappropriate for play and I don’t see how it helps “strip Hamlet to the core”. If anything the costumes added another layer of complexity to it. Why make the characters look like something out of an MMO-RPG instead of having them wear all black or all white if some sort of minimalism was what they were after?

Despite my problem with the production’s aims, I highly recommend that you catch Repertory Philippines’ Hamlet at Onstage Greenbelt 1. The show will be playing up til February 17 only so watch it! Now!

February 1-17, 2008
8:00 PM on Fridays & Saturday
3:30 PM on Saturdays & Sundays

Venue
OnStage
2/F Greenbelt 1, Ayala Center, Makati City

Tickets
Orchestra Center - P 550.00
Orchestra Side - P 350.00
Balcony - P 250.00

Other reviews:
Ade - Hamlet
Fritz - Still Awestruck by Repertory Philippines’ Hamlet
Gibbs - Welcome Initiates! (not really a review but whatever, I’m mentioned here :P)

I’ve never been one for fairy tales. As a child I was fed the usual diet of Disney movies and happily-ever-after endings by my well-meaning parents, which I did enjoy. Sometimes, however, I wish they exposed my childhood self to literature along the lines of The Call of Cthulhu instead. It’s quite a shock to enter the real world and discover that:

a) there really IS such a thing as Prince Charming, but he’s so damn charming that all the Prince Charmings in all fairy tales are one and the same guy
b) the hero complex all those would-be Princes have gets really old and ridiculous after a while
c) wicked witches in the woods make better friends than pampered princesses
d) I’m not going to sit around and wait for some douchebag on a horse to protect me from the dragons and giants of the world. I can venture out of my castle all alone just fine, thank you very much.

I suppose all that happy ending propaganda is good for something because kids would start swinging from their bedroom windows if they learned how shitty life can get at such an early age. Once I start crapping out babies I’ll still read them fairy tales, but with a healthy mix of their retold versions, just so they don’t have any illusions about what kind of characters and moral dilemmas are waiting for them outside their parent’s home.

Last Friday I saw The New Voice Company’s production of Into the Woods with Fritz at the Music Museum. Seeing as I am an uncultured lout, all I knew about the play was that it’s a retelling of several fairy tales in a single narrative; I wasn’t entirely sure about the particulars of the plot and the conflict. But that basic premise was enough to get me all excited about finally getting to see it onstage. What I love about the sub-genre of retold fairy tales is the clever way in which black and white are sprinkled with shades of gray and the unexpected and often dark twists added to predictable and saccharine childhood classics.

For a moment I was worried that Into the Woods would be a total disappointment. The first act of the play, which ran for about an hour and a half, was surprisingly campy for a retold fairy tale. The bad guys got punished and the good guys got their wishes granted after a series of deus-ex-machina moments. Save for Julia Abueva, the 11-year old girl who played Red Riding Hood, I wasn’t too impressed by the cast’s performance. I was ready to go home and crash by the time the characters were prancing about on stage being all in-your-face about getting what they wanted. But the real retelling begins at Act Two; the plot becomes far more sinister as our fairy tale heroes suffer the treachery of their deepest desires. As though the cast members were saving their energy, everyone’s performances picked up and I got wowed off my seat by their powerful musical monologues, especially Lynn Sherman’s (The Witch) rendition of The Last Midnight. Act Two is also the part where characters start dying off one by one. I’m not going to say which characters get squished under the giant’s heel but rest assured, the most useless and annoying one gets her due, and you’ll be snickering like mad when that finally happens.

If you intend to bring children under ten years old to see Into the Woods, I suggest that you leave after Act One ends because they’re bound to get restless and bored by the time Act Two kicks in. Not that I doubt your children’s intelligence, but Act Two deals with realities that they won’t be able to appreciate. They’ll start making whimpering noises, squirming in their seats, and demanding that their parents take them to the bathroom — all of which is bound to distract, irritate, and ultimately piss off noise-sensitive, children-hating theatergoers such as myself.

Overall, Into the Woods is a very intelligent production that deals with highly complex themes on life, love, friendship, betrayal, and greed. The intricate fashion in which every character’s fears and desires overlap and get woven together into one narrative is bound to keep you more than just entertained. Just like any excellent fairy tale retelling, Into the Woods makes you think about life, the necessity of going “into the woods” to make things right, and other important stuff as the events after happily-ever-after unfold.

For show dates, ticket reservations, and other questions, check out The Bachelor Girl.

I love bargains. Don’t we all? During a shopping trip at St. Francis Square, I thought I struck gold when I unearthed a hardcover copy of Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus for only 300 pesos. The inside jacket cover promised me a story that involves “Working in a world where a college degree qualifies her to make photocopies and color-coordinate file folders, twenty-four year old Girl is struggling to keep up with the essential trinity of food, shelter, and student loans.” A fictional story on the perils of being a young twenty-something in the modern working world! I’ve yet to encounter anything like this - for only three hundred bucks. What a bargain, right?

Worst. Book. EVER.

Well, let me tell you something about bargains. A bargain is when you pay a low price for an item whose awesomeness makes it worth ten times the price you originally paid for, you cheapskate. When the said item lets you down, no matter how dirt-cheap you got it for, that’s not a bargain. That’s downright robbery.

Not only did Citizen Girl rob me of 300 pesos; I shall never get back the four hours I spent reading this crap. A member of the white-collar working class no longer has the luxury to sit around in two-day old pajamas reading some piece of shit book. I’m willing to let those four hours slide but if I don’t get my money back, whether literally or in the form of karmic currency, someone’s walls shall be painted with my menstrual blood. Soon.

Does you want menstrual art on ur walls?

I suspected that Citizen Girl might be a chick lit novel since the cover art proclaimed that the authors were the ones who penned The Nanny Diaries, another one of those chick books turned movies. But I figured - hey, with a premise like that, there’s no way this book is chick lit. Two pages into the first chapter, I was eating my words in silent defeat.

There are two infallible ways by which you can detect chick lit from good old-fashioned literature. First, the horrible writing style, which I shall explain in a little bit. Second, if the story is more plot-driven than character driven, wherein the plot consists of a whimsical series of events that do not follow the rules of logic, then what you have in your hands is chick lit.

Oh god, the writing style. Think of the ditziest blog you know and have it hump a badly-written Cosmopolitan article (which is not to say that GOOD Cosmopolitan articles exist). That’s what Citizen Girl reads like. What makes the offspring different from its parents is that there are four-syllable words and feminist theories sprinkled here and there so the girls who actually like reading this crap can feel like they’re so smrt. Can someone please hand me a gun?

Just to show you how BAD this book is, I have rewritten the first paragraph of this entry according to the writing style the authors have employed.

I love depreciated acquisitions. Don’t we all? Is that my crush I see online on YM? ZOMG! During an interactive shopping trip at St. Francis Square, I was blithely astonished when I disintered a hardcover copy of Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus at the nominal price of 300 pesos. OMG he’s messaging me. OMGOMGOMGOMGOGMOGMG. The inside jacket cover promised me a tale that involves HE is messaging ME! Ask me out pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease. “Working in a world where a college degree qualifies her to make photocopies and color-coordinate file folders, twenty-four year old Girl is struggling to keep up with the essential trinity of food, shelter, and student loans.” I’ve been burned by love before but I know how to open my heart to every new possibility. I AM READY TO LOVE YOU! Letmelove you oh please letmeloveyou. A boolean, fictional account on the perils of being a young twenty-something in modern day capitalist society! Does he like me? Does he? Mustnotoverthinkmustnotoverthinkmustnotoverthink. I’ve yet to alight upon anything like this - for only three hundred pesos. OMG HE ASKED ME OUT. What an economical find, right? Tee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee heeeeee.

If you like what you read, then grab a copy of Citizen Girl. The writing style gets even better. And by “better” I mean “worse”. What amazes me is that this crap not only sells — it gets movie deals too! If I spend the every single day of the next two years churning out chick lit after chick lit novel, I can retire a millionaire by the time I’m twenty-five. Sounds like a new life plan!

Citizen Girl tries to make up for the paper-thin characters by filling the plot with all these ridiculous events. First, our protagonist Girl (seriously, what kind of writer names their female protagonist Girl!?) gets fired by the Boss From Hell after enduring an entire slew of evil stepmother-like treatment from her. (Did I mention that Girl has a 14-year old brother named Jack? After Jack Kerouac? ZOMG beatnik literary reference! What a deep this book is!) Of course she meets the man of her dreams at a job fair and they get together in two weeks. Why these stupid books always involve the female protagonist falling in love with someone even though this in no way contributes to the story’s development completely baffles me.

After that, a bunch of crap happens which I won’t bother listing down because I need to hit the gym in ten minutes. I will add though, that Girl does find a job eventually only for her to quit in the end because she gets asked to run a porn site. Since Girl is a feminist, and porn is “rape” spelled backwards, managing an adult website was something waaay beneath her moral standards. I think the message of the novel has something to do about never compromising what you believe in, but I’m not really sure. What Citizen Girl really taught me is that if you write bad fiction about single working women in their twenties, you’ll make more money than you’ve ever dreamed of.

Oh, and you’ll never guess what her boss’s name is. Yep, you guessed right. Girl’s boss is aptly named Guy. This book, what a clever!!

The inside cover jacket says that Citizen Girl “Captures with biting accuracy what it means to be young and female in the new economy…an entertaining read that is startlingly relevant.” I don’t know about the entertainment factor, but Citizen Girl is about as relevant to me as paparazzi shots of Lindsay Lohan’s McDonald’s breakfast, or what used to be a McDonald’s breakfast, floating in the toilet seat of a club in New York’s Meat Packing District. Which is to say, not very relevant at all. As for its accuracy, pfft. Unless I’m the only 21-year college graduate in the world who didn’t land a job where business trips involve a designer shopping spree and a complete makeover in LA, I can safely say that the events in this book are about as accurate as…aw hell, I’m not even gonna bother with metaphors anymore.

Maybe I’ll sue the publisher for false advertising. Or maybe I should fly to New York and hunt these wimmin down. Then when I find them I’ll shoot them in the head so they’ll never write a single book again.