Liwanag sa Dilim, 9Work Theatrical’s new musical featuring the songs of Rico Blanco, begins on a rainy night, when our hero, Elesi (Anthony Rosaldo), is handed a fidget spinner after he is orphaned. They have just buried his adoptive mother, leaving him wondering who his real parents are.
Set against a striking midnight blue backdrop, with silhouettes of umbrellas and coats, the crowd disperses. The family doctor consoles Elesi, revealing that his adoptive parents found him with the fidget spinner and a necklace.
Like an answered prayer, the toy with its blade-like (elisi) wings soon hurls Elesi into a wild journey across time in search of his real mom and dad. The toy isn’t exactly a time travel device or a teleporter, since Elesi isn’t just bounced back and forth between the past and the future, but also into the fictional world of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere.
The musical, from the book and direction of Robbie Guevara, doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s an exuberant, childlike production that doesn’t care about logic — only fun that’s mildly infectious. It’s radiating beyond the stage from its cast of gamey and mostly popular television stars (with an alternative cast led by Khalil Ramos as Elesi) performing with such brio that it’s hard not to just play along. And if you’re a fan of Rivermaya’s lead songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, your spirits lift every time the cast breaks into his anthemic songs.
These songs, however, are forcefully inserted into the narrative. You can feel the substantial effort it took to strategically weave Blanco’s deceptively simple but poetic, emotionally loaded lyrics into Rizal’s work.
Tired English Joke
Elesi’s blast into the late Spanish colonial period thrusts him into the lives of Crisostomo Ibarra (CJ Novato) and his fiancée Maria Clara (a brilliant Nicole Emilio). Yes, Elesi is Elias. But instead of reckoning with his grief after losing his mother, Elesi becomes Maria Clara’s contemporary English tutor, introducing her to Gen Z slang.
The Liwanag sa Dilim’s humor leans heavily on Filipinos’ longstanding fear of English, a language that would not be introduced into the local vernacular until the Americans took over at the turn of the century. Ibarra reinforces the tired joke that English is intimidating, cringingly saying, “Dumudugo ang aking ilong.” Like a thousand Filipino shows and skits before this, this spectacle of a production is largely wasted on building “relatability” through shared language insecurity for laughs. But we wonder: Why is our comedy still rooted in linguistic inferiority?
Thank goodness, no matter how corny the punchlines, the musical is saved by Emilio’s comedic timing and Noli’s critical look at the ills of Spanish colonial rule: Catholic friar abuse, hypocrisy, corruption, and the lack of autonomy for women — few of the many elements the musical tries to inject into its relatively scattered storytelling.
Redeeming Numbers
Liwanag sa Dilim is mainly a showcase of singing, dancing, and acting skills inspired by musicals before it. Nonetheless, the ensemble delivers a heartfelt performance.
But because of the lack of an imaginative story and the tired English-language joke, the musical is often dull. You no longer care what happens to Elesi, since the story fails to give him a singular focus. He’s nothing more than a Gen Z with tattoos, who speaks in Taglish, breaking into “Ulan,” “Elesi,” or “Umaaraw, Umuulan” from time to time.
Standouts include “Kisapmata,” sung exquisitely and heartbreakingly by Emilio, capturing that timbre of grief and loss. Meanwhile, Rosaldo’s voice is often drowned out by the heavy live orchestra.
At nearly three hours of runtime, the musical gets exhausting, but is often saved by the catchy songs and the energetic performance onstage. Boo Gabunada is especially captivating in a mostly non-speaking role as the villainous Padre Salvi, who gets his own song number, “Faithless.” As for Padre Damaso, there is one number where, after a tragic incident, he suddenly breaks into a playful, comedic number, “Tsismis,” which feels rather off considering the preceding serious moment.
Costume design is rather interesting, melding Filipiniana with modern attire, as mostly seen in the footwear: the men wear Doc Martens, and the women wear chunky mesh platform shoes, perhaps to complement Elesi’s tattoos and the equally bizarre world where fictional characters come alive.
Clearly, Liwanag sa Dilim is intended to impress and make itself accessible to the masses, while also being strongly anti-Catholic, anti-colonialism, anti-extrajudicial killings, and anti-patriarchy, but due to its continued reverence for the English language, it paradoxically pro-colonialism.
It’s frenetic and urgent but flimsy — and absurd, though not in a David Lynch way. More illogical. But in all the mess and frequent yawn-inducing parts, at least we are reminded how Blanco’s songs still remain as resonant as ever.
Liwanag sa Dilim’s closing performance is on May 3 and 4 at the CRP Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Makati.
