Potent Machinations in Broadway Asia Entertainment’s Cinderella (Theater)

The temperament of staging conventional theater musicals these days seem to inculcate basically humanistic values and indicative of personal-spiritual transformations. But to some extent, these purveyors of theatrical fantasies can be harmful as well.

Having watched the ongoing musical led by Tony award-winning actress Lea Salonga at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main Theater in collaboration with an almost inter-racial ensemble cast has led the Filipino audience literally unmoved. Perhaps, the staging did not focus much on the basic storytelling device which is to intentionally move the audience and let them experience what these basic human distortions can offer. Instead, the archetypal process of this production totally misleads the audience using technology as a source of hypnosis. Director Bobby Garcia must have been too keen in perfecting the theatrics and forgets ultimately that musical theater is also a way of boosting the morale of the audience. Hence, making the audience experience falsification embroidered with artificiality and disdain.

The ornamentation of Cinderella story captivates all sorts of Asia's societal issues including cruelty, discrimination, injustice, greed, inequality, lust, power and poverty as seen through in various countries especially the Philippines. Dreaming is hallucinatory in effect. It can be psychologically disturbing. On the other hand, dream can signify hope. Hope is real and should never be taken as a mockery but an awakening of calculated future actions. Garcia was neither giving both interpretations a space on stage. He maneuvered the audience endlessly with pure machinations. Everything was mechanical not to mention credible magic machineries like the changing of the rags-to-riches Cinderella costuming, transformational sceneries from the castle to the ball, the pumpkin carriage and a whole lot more.

Though it succeeded in giving spectacular technical triumph in terms of scene design (David Gallo); costume design (Renato Balestra); wig and hair design (Robert-Charles Vallance); lighting design (Paul Miller); projection design (G.A. Fallarme); magic design (Don Wayne); sound design (Michael Waters); orchestrations (Robert Russel Bennett); orchestrator (Larry Blank); musical director / conductor (J. Michael Duff) and choreography (Vince Pesce), the production still lacks sincerity and sympathy.

Salonga, no doubt about her crystal voice and longevity in acting and singing effectively Rodgers and Hammerstein’s long list of musical achievements in tones and melodies of all the songs of Cinderella, should avoid doing ingenue roles. Vivacious as she is, casting her on stage doing child-like Cinderella is a make-believe. Peter Saide (Prince) plays the character with full of theatricality adding on to the wrong vision of the production. However, Saide makes his charming physique successful to a younger crowd. Moreover, the metaphoric contrapuntal parts of the ensemble cast were exaggeratedly annoying probably because of stereotyping the characters the way other cultures would definitely disagree.

It would have been an interesting viewpoint to see an all-Filipino cast interpreting Broadway Asia’s Cinderella in an emotionally-charged ensemble pervasive of its Asia’s true socio-economic conditions. Thus, becoming more relevant to theater audiences in Manila. After all, Cinderella did originate in China, an Asian country with full of mysticism and magic but still hopeful of reality - like a dogma.