Vince Vicentuan

Imagine yourself in a small room where you can watch people in their most unguarded moments and listen to their innermost, basest desires without any burden or worry of getting caught… Imagine yourself doing what you love doing with no cares for time and space… Imagine yourself in a dressing room where the ethereal meets the corporal, and the objects of your voyeuristic eyes are actresses prepping up for their roles prior to their cues on stage.

In the play 'Boston Marriage,' dramatist David Mamet famously quotes, 'We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.' Indeed, as life in the present has become ever more stressful, one can always choose to find comfort in the gustatory wonders of a perfect pie.

Jukebox musicals have been quite a trend lately. Owing its origin to Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story, which successfully ran on West End from 1989 to 2003, the genre's popularity has been boosted by many others that followed suit, such as Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, featuring the music and life of Carole King. Just recently, Manila had seen the staging of a tribute to one of the country's more enduring musical groups, The Apo Hiking Society, with the successful Eto na! Musikal nAPO! This mid-October, yet another jukebox musical, built around the iconic songs of major karaoke staples provider, Air Supply, beckons.

The press preview of David Henry Hwang's award-winning play 'M. Butterfly,' produced by Broadway producer Jhett Tolentino and Frontrow Entertainment, at the Maybank Performing Arts Theater proved to be far stronger than the force of nature, fluttering nonchalantly despite looming news of a super typhoon. As if on cue, Typhoon Mangkhut was a no-show when the local press trooped to the Bonifacio Global City Arts Center to witness with excitement the return of this classic, 28 years after an 18-year-old RS Francisco won the hearts of critics and audiences alike in Dulaang UP's 1990 local premiere.

Philippine theater enthusiasts will surely take pride in the Manila kickoff of the first-ever international touring production of Disney's 'The Lion King,' hailed as 'the world's #1 musical.'

As far as our fickle adult memory is concerned, there could be very few child roles in major Broadway and West End musicals that captured our hearts: Annie, Oliver, Mary Lennox, and Dorothy. Matilda is the latest welcome addition.

Every generation, past or present, knows what a great musical is: it's one that's so hauntingly memorable, its score and plot reflective of the time or the aspirations of the time. Such is The Sound of Music whose songs and romantic narrative have haunted us to this very day, since its November 16, 1959 Broadway opening.

Touted as "Broadway's greatest dance musical," "West Side Story," the international tour, opened in Manila to a crowd of old and new fans, and the result is both exhilarating and, to some degree, bifurcating.