THE brain of the Revolution is the purest of them all. It is a lovely and fresh duplicity to a man who is physically crippled at the height of the fighting, but certainly the one with the most consistent standpoint. The person with great disability has the most ability to think beyond oneself, class interest and tribal culture. That is Apolinario Mabini in the moving new work called Mabining Mandirigma by Dr. Nic Tionson, foremost theater scholar. There in that title lies a pun so keen and original that we rethink the family name of Apolinario Mabini not in the feminine timidity but in the crystal purity borne by the warrior with that name. Adding a graceful trick to that discourse is the decision to have a woman play the lead role.
The theater piece Mabining Mandirigma faces head-on the problem of interpreting the life of a hero marginalized by his being disabled and thus not a warrior in the strictest sense of the word. But in the libretto of Tiongson, degendering Mabini is the least of the sin we commit against the depiction of the hero than in forgetting what he has done for the nation in the Revolution.
Apolinario Mabini is credited for the wisdom behind the second part of the Revolution. Who remembers that second phase? Very few do. It took Mabini, the uncompromising persona, to do just that—to continue the fight for independence.
All throughout the play, there are two contrapuntal characters: that of Emilio Aguinaldo and that of Mabini. The narrative does not begin and end with these two individuals. Tiongson creates a fictional character, Pepe, who attends to Mabini even as the latter loses all financial capability to support an aide. In between the Everyman and the larger-than-life heroes are the other figures whose family names presently grace schools and streets, institutions and ideologies. Paterno, Legarda and Buencamino are just a few of these names that adorn our history if we make the nation’s story into a hallway of celebrity nationalists.
It is clear from the start that Mabini never considers himself an Ilustrado. He talks about the lack of wealth as the one reason why he cannot be lumped with these wealthy characters.
And yet it can be said that being part of the intellegentsia is being part of the elite.
One can talk about Mabining Mandirigma by obsessing about its steampunk provenance but at the heart of this political revue is a review of the monomyth, the trails that the hero follows.
And so it comes to pass that the story of Mabini begins with the wheel of time that keeps turning and returning, and turning again. The metaphor of the set design is vivid: we keep turning and returning to histories hoping we can make sense of what we had and what we are now.
Mabining Mandirigma, a blisteringly opinionated musical play about real persons and idealized heroes, makes sense of our histories.
The Congress we have now is represented in the Malolos Convention. The protopoliticians are all part of the elite with their interest to protect. The Congress that fights for independence is the same body that approves of the entry of the Americans. Mabini is marginalized by the politics of his colleagues as he is also pushed to the periphery by the Americans.
There are many poignant—not melodramatic—scenes in the play. The dream scene where the mother of the hero visits him finds Mabini distraught. All the names that we revere now he mentions: Rizal, del Pilar, et al. “They are all gone,” Mabini intones. “Why am I still around,” he asks.
His mother assures him his legacy will be in the future, when his soul blooms and infects the fervor of those who believe in love of nation.
Surprisingly, the play is kinder to Emilio Aguinaldo. The general is caught in between the powerful elite and his soldiers. He listens to the advice of Mabini, but the pressure from the elite overwhelms the soldier. As Aguinaldo, Arman Ferrer rants and shouts and appeals to the mind of Mabini in that burnished tenor. Ferrer is a sensual, physical presence, a theatrical ploy that elevates the Aguinaldo character to the level equal to Mabini, especially during scenes when their minds would not meet. In the hands of Ferrer, Aguinaldo soars to a level never before attributed to the general. The bathos in the biography of Aguinaldo happens in the end when the actor talks about how Aguinaldo ran for president and lost. Ferrer wins in this play and could give our present crop of singers intense competition.
The casting of female actors to portray not only Mabini but also the most important American personalities of the period must have been daunting during the planning stage. As the theater piece unfolds, one acknowledges the prescience and creative bravura the decision brings to the production. The duplicity engaged by the gender brings on the complexity of heroes and heroines, of people struggling with ideas about freedom and at the same time looking to the world of opportunities and development.
Mark Twain, Howard Taft, James Franklin Bell, and MacArthur are all played by girls with lilting soprano voices. They all sing enticing Mabini out of his intransigence. The girls would group and sing as a chorus, or like the Andrew Sisters who were icons during the Second World War. Their bouncy tunes seem to antedate the persistence of American presence in the country long after the Revolution.
The night I watched the play, Liesl Batucan played Mabini. It is easy to forget that a woman plays the male hero because the actress appears to be performing the ideal Mabini, the man who thinks ravishingly because he cannot fight. Armed with a contralto voice that can belt when needed, Batucan is fierce with consonants and vowels clipped and well-articulated. She imbues the Mabini with a superiority in terms of ideas and ideals. We believe her hero as the person who shuns the miracles of a dead Christ and other images, but who later returns for the curtain call in a grand, beautifully lighted “carrosa.”
The audience applauded that afternoon at Cultural Center of the Philippines when the libretto allowed and enabled Mabini to stand up. Of all the heroes we want to see alive and moving, it is Mabini that deserves a resurrection. Mabini would not want to be a saint but it is the cruelty of history that this seems to be his destiny—if only he could be remembered.
The music and all the songs of Joed Balsamo threaten to spill over into the mainstream. It would be heartwarming to see our singers in those noontime and Sunday extravaganzas sing and do the duets about love of country and all its complications.
The choreography of Denisa Reyes seems to have the young audience in mind. Engaging and pop, the movements onstage are all enablers for a critical historical mind to flourish.
Chris Millado directs with passion the story of a hero built to be a cautionary tale about how we never learn from history. There are no gimmickry, just the organic way of telling a tale and making sure people will listen.
Toym Imao completes for us the visual splendor of a time gone and a history barely recalled.
There is a part during the curtain call when the cast summarizes what happens to the historical personalities and expresses one fact: the characters whose actions we have witnessed are still around, the families of political dynasties dominate the political landscape, and politicians who kill without due process. I like to believe that the applause that followed the epilogue is both a release of the rage in the audience at the unfettered dirty politics of the land, and the theater piece that brought on that release.
We know histories can only teach and not unravel events. Mabining Mandirigma does more than what history does: it changes the stories and uncovers for us the hero long buried by the masterful colonizers. Tiongson is the fearless digger.