This Tanghalang Pilipino twinbill is a LOL-a-minute that’s pretty deceptive. The pair of abbreviated funnies get away with poking fun at big themes that are, in hindsight, no laughing matter at all.
Welcome to Intelstar spoofs an entire generation of workhorses shape-shifting into raccoon-eyed night owls – CSRs (customer service reps) or call center agents. You go, “At last, a play about the outsourced life!”
Depicted in the microcosm of a typical training center of a Makati or Ortigas firm, the story itself seamlessly shifts from simulation to satire and back, and effectively traps the audience into being instant e-rep trainees. Without much warning, the audience finds itself in the middle of a hilarious Q-n-A via a Powerpoint presentation.
Q.: How would you pronounce “Did you eat?” in the neutralized California accent?
Audience tries an answer: “Did ya eet?”
A.: “Jeet?”
The part-spoof, part-reality show by Chris Martinez (writer and director) lasts about 45 minutes, short enough, or long enough, to drop the bomb – the great job opportunity to the newly grad is suddenly seen as something sinister. Seen in the awful prism of global trade (currently unfair) and sense of nationhood (weak to nonexistent), the hope of the fatherland, or motherland, find themselves forced to change not just their speech patterns and circadian rhythms, but their very own selves – without even leaving the P.I.
This Palanca-award winning play’s only fault is its envisioning of the outsourced life in the old context of colonialism, which is a long-retired cliché. This view didn’t take into account the fact that the damned Americans are also angry as hell because their jobs are being taken away from them, no thanks to the word “cost-effectiveness.” The vision fails to consider that big business knows no national boundaries because corporate social responsibility, if at all taken into account, is all about creating wealth (making profit) and sharing it. The ethics, if at all, comes in the manner profit is shared, and not in the context of warm patriotic feelings.
But this oversight is easy to overlook because Welcome to Intelstar manages to bring home the minimum message of identity crisis, or the relevance of identity, in the onslaught of globalization.
Another thing that makes this show a must is Eugene Domingo’s own surreal transformation in the eyes of those who only know her as the character Simang on TV soaps – the alternately street-smart and slow-brained, accented househelp. Here, as the ‘officious’-looking trainor and career girl Ma’am Chelsea, Eugene not only “normalizes” her accent like the real thing, she also delivers a tour de force as she ‘shape-shifts’ herself from a nattily attired corporate woman to one vocalizing the stereotype of an irate ‘nigger’ caller. And Eugene does this to a gender-bending un-believability. Give her the Oscar now! (Oops.)
The minimalist stage design (Dante Garcia) effectively focuses all the attention on Eugene’s class act, with the wavy, almost-psychedelic office flooring pattern serving as the only concession to the subtle surrealism of it all.
**
The laughter-per-sec momentum is sustained by Gee-Gee at Waterina, but one has got to be familiar enough with gayspeak to get it -- the close look given to the possibly truest form of personal relationship a gay man would find in life: the platonic friendship of another gay guy.
Gee-Gee at Waterina is claimed to be based on the real-life friendship of actual people – the soon-to-be famous “comfort gay” character named Walterina Markova (for whom a film biopic had been made) and his bisexual/gay politician friend Justo “JJ” Justo. Running about 60 minutes, the play zeroes in on the opposite-tempered friends as they square off atop their perch in the jungle of man’s pained existence, lashing at each other’s, um, frail humanity while musing on the meaning of it all. Paulo Cabañero convincingly plays Gee-Gee (derived from “JJ”), who’s someone not given to dramatic musings, while veteran crossover comic Lu Veloso portrays the cross-dresser Waterina, who proves to be a squishing faucet of tears when pushed at the wrong buttons. Together, they run in circles trading barbs that are as delicious as they are malicious.
Critiqued at the 2002 Iligan National Writers Workshop by the likes of Ian R. Casocot and Bien Lumbera, the witty lines are numerous yet perfectly timed, though admittedly not to everyone’s taste. (Some members of the audience appeared to be not laughing at all. Could it be the green-minded punning?) Veloso didn’t quite pull it off, though, when it comes to the demanding requirements of a fast-fading but still flamboyant transvestite -- a role, I‘m afraid, that needs a far gayer performer.
Gee-Gee at Waterina shows a remarkable heart for one of the most misunderstood yet ill-judged among society’s victim souls, and more. The subject is fast becoming ho-hum post-Ma Vie en Rose and Maximo Oliveros (and now what, Brokeback Mountain?), but Gee-Gee dares touch, if not try to address, almost all of the tough questions in the elusive quest for personal affirmation – the root of gayness, a gay guy’s self-worth, conception of love, etc. It’s disappointing, though, that the story closes with the same certitude (“I am what I am”) the gay community accuses straights (and their more bigoted version) of – when it can do well to leave with an open-ended question that’s only fitting for something that remains a mystery as of press time.