A chilling stage adaptation of Kisapmata
How stories reflecting our history evolve over time
By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter
Theater Review
Kisapmata
Presented by Tanghalang Pilipino
IN 1981, one of the best Filipino films ever made captured people’s imaginations. Kisapmata, directed by Mike de Leon and co-written with Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. and Raquel Villavicencio, disturbed audiences with its twisted premise of a possessive patriarch unwilling to free his daughter from the tyrannical rule of his household.
Though it was based on a real-life crime story by Nick Joaquin called “The House on Zapote Street,” the film reshaped the narrative into a representation of the then ongoing Marcos dictatorship. This year, theater company Tanghalang Pilipino brings Kisapmata to modern audiences, now upfront in grappling with a history at risk of being forgotten.
Within the first few minutes, playwright Guelan Luarca immediately sets the adaptation apart from all versions that preceded it. It opens with Dely (played by Lhorvie Nuevo), the wife numbed to submission from years of living under the iron fist of her husband, ex-policeman Dadong. In neither the Nick Joaquin story nor the film does her character have a voice, but she does here.
The setting of Zapote Street (described by Joaquin in the original story as a residential area in Makati which was once an empty field of tall grass) provides the atmospheric, eerie overtones of the play. Dely opens with retelling how the area was once a silent overgrowth, now taken over by humans, though the grass (or talahiban) remains in the shadows. The elevated platform where the characters move is backgrounded and surrounded by stalks of this grass — the only design element present on the bare stage.
“Pagmamahal ang batas (Love is the rule),” Dely whispers many times throughout the play. And this so-called love is enforced only by Dadong (played by Jonathan Tadioan) as he abuses his wife and daughter psychologically.
Compared to the film before it, Tanghalang Pilipino’s Kisapmata leans into the ridiculous yet chilling dynamics of the family’s suffocating household.
The story kicks off when the couple’s only daughter, a medical student named Mila (played by Toni Go), reveals that she is pregnant by her boyfriend Noel (played by Marco Viana). The latter, already a doctor, has been helping her study for her medical board exam. The two ask for permission to marry, though Dadong only agrees on the condition that a dowry is paid — and later, that they do not move out of his house.
One of the points of acclaim for the 1981 film was the production design (recognized at the 7th Metro Manila Film Festival, along with a plethora of major awards), due to the use of the split-level suburban architecture that made the house a perfect instrument for the family’s dysfunctional story. It was also an element described explicitly in Mr. Joaquin’s story, as it was a prevailing style for middle-class families.
The play goes for something completely different. It evokes the rigid rules of the house with a minimalist approach, the square elevated platform the actors move on never changing, no matter where the characters go. Be it indoors, outdoors, the hospital, right at the gate — the four walls of the house are always present.
No other actors appear in its entirety. It is only Mila, Noel, Dadong, and Dely, even if they speak to others on the phone or walk past people in a given scene. No matter where they go or what they do, the house and its unforgiving rules remain. The costumes also evoke this, all of them dressed in beige as if prisoners of their own making.
At the CCP Complex’s Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, Kisapmata plays out as a full tragedy, the unease, grace, and defiance in the movements of Toni Go as Mila giving the audience someone to root for. She shines in hopelessness as much as she does in the steadfast attempts to escape the grasp of her father, along with Marco Viana as Noel who gradually becomes desperate to free himself from the household’s intangible prison.
Wholly original, the scenes between mother and daughter are electric, the two women representing separate generations of submission, one who has accepted her doom and another who will fight it to the very end.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Tadioan’s take on the merciless Dadong is trickier to receive by those who’ve watched the film with its enormous performance by Vic Silayan. Tadioan puts his own spin on it, his voice softer and wheezier and his mannerisms more jovial compared to Silayan’s booming presence. But when his quiet, bodily presence is used to full advantage, usually when the character loses his cool, the effect is just as chilling.
The gradual rise of tension and escalation of intimidation tactics used by Dadong carry over strongly to the medium of theater. The anti-Marcos allegory reaches its peak when, in the throes of the character’s physical and sexual abuse of Dely, the screens around the hall flash with news clippings and reels of the oppression suffered during the Marcos dictatorship.
At this point, Nuervo’s haunting, whispery narration and commentary of events is given full context by the horrific beating she endures, similar to that of the Philippines during Martial Law. Creepily, the only props shown in any of the characters’ hands throughout the play are Dadong’s weapons — a gun and a machete — the rest merely pantomimed by the cast, driving home the reality of his rule over them.
The way everything boils over in the end is as impeccably paced as the film and the short story before it. Luarca’s take on Kisapmata also benefits from its tight running time of an hour and a half, with no intermission, leaving the audience barely any time to breathe.
It’s amazing to see a story’s journey from an actual true crime case to a well-written short story by Nick Joaquin, to the horror masterpiece by Mike de Leon, all the way to this gripping theater adaptation by Guelan Luarca. It reminds me of something Ricky Lee once said of the greatest stories in Philippine literature/cinema/theater — palagi iyan manganganak basta’t may dahilan para ikuwento pa rin ang kuwento (it will continue being reborn as long as there is still a reason to tell that story).
Tanghalang Pilipino proves that there are still many reasons to retell Kisapmata today.
Kisapmata runs until March 30 at the Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex, Pasay City. It is restricted to audience members 16 years old and above. Regular tickets cost P1,500 while VIP tickets cost P2,000. For more details, visit Tanghalang Pilipino’s social media pages.
