In the Heights Manila: As good as it gets?

I think it was Plato who said that ours is but a world of echoes, that everything in our reality only hints of another dimension where things exist in essence, in their purest form. Based on his belief, are we doomed to live our entire existence without experiencing “the real thing”? When it comes to local theater, I sometimes think this is true.

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I grew up believing that Philippine theatre was every bit as wonderful as anything that existed outside the country. After all, wasn’t a Filipina headlining Miss Saigon in the West End?

The first real musical I remember seeing was Les Miserables by Repertory Philippines. I was in Grade Three. I still remember Javert’s inverted body on the barricade, the rotating stage, and I remember thinking that I’d much rather be Eponine than Cosette. Even if Cosette had the money and got the guy, Eponine got all the good songs. I distinctly remember my lola shaking Baby Barredo’s hand after the curtain fell and congratulating her on a show that was “as good as Broadway”. My lola had an apartment in New York so I knew she meant business when it came to theater.

When I was in high school one of my best friends came home raving about the latest hit on Broadway, Rent. She lent us her CD’s and got us started on the world of the ten gallon plastic pickle tub. When Rent opened in Music Museum a few months later, I saw it myself and fell in love (with Mark/JM who I’m still sad is gay). We watched it five times and would sing “Out Tonight”, “Light My Candle”, “Will I” and most of the other songs on our lunch breaks. In a school activity we were asked to give ourselves nicknames and naturally mine was Mimi (luckily my teacher was also a Rent-head and unfazed by how my alternate self was an HIV-positive stripper). That Manila production was my original Rent. I enjoyed it so much that even when I found myself in New York I didn’t feel the need to see it on Broadway.

I would consider those two experiences the biggest contributors to making me a bona fide theater lover, though I’ve been lucky to have had many wonderfully more since then.

Last Friday became another theater night, an impromptu plan to see the opening performance of In The Heights in Manila.