Reviews: Welcome to Intelstar; Gee-Gee at Waterina

(Unpublished (disapproved?) reviews; sorry, spoilers ahead)

This Tanghalang Pilipino twinbill is a LOL-a-minute that’s pretty deceptive. The pair of abbreviated funnies gets 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, we call them.

With this landmark achievement, one can only go, “At last, a play about the outsourced life!”

Depicted in the typical training room of a Makati or Ortigas firm, the story seamlessly shifts from simulation to satire and back, and effectively traps the audience into acting as the e-rep trainees themselves. I thought that was a smart trick. Without much warning, the audience finds itself in the middle of a hilarious Q-n-A using a PowerPoint presentation. Here's a sample exchange:

Trainor: How would you pronounce “Did you eat?” in the neutralized California accent?

Audience tries an answer: “Did ya eet?”

Trainor: No. It's...“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 unsettling thought: today's great job opportunity for the newly grad has something sinister in it. 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 perhaps 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 differently accented house-help. 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. Eugene really does this gender-bending act unbelievably well. Give her the Oscar now! (Oops.)

The minimalist stage design 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 J. Dennis Teodosio's Gee-Gee at Waterina, but one has got to be familiar enough with gayspeak to get it. Gee-Gee takes a close look at the presumably truest form of personal relationship a gay man could ever 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 has been made, starring Dolphy and sons) 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 frail humanity while musing on the meaning of it all.

Paulo Cabañero convincingly plays Gee-Gee, a character who's 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, the witty lines here are numerous yet perfectly timed. The laughs, admittedly, are not to everyone’s taste, though. Some members of the audience appeared to be not getting all that green-minded punning at all. Or could it be that they were not really amused? And Veloso didn’t quite pull it off, 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 and ill-judged members of society. Though the subject is fast becoming mainstream and ho-hum (hello Brokeback), Gee-Gee is actually ahead of its time for daring to touch on, if not directly address, almost all of the toughest questions in the elusive quest for personal affirmation by gays or homosexuals – the root of gayness, a gay guy’s self-worth, a gay man's conception of love, etc.

It’s disappointing, though, that the story closes with such an air of certitude 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.

(2006)

(Thanks, A.G.)