REVIEW: ‘Ang Walang Hanggang Banyuhay Natin’ Is A Testament To All-Consuming Female Love

REVIEW: ‘Ang Walang Hanggang Banyuhay Natin’ Is A Testament To All-Consuming Female Love

It’s Sappho (Filipinas’ version). 

A show about women, for women, by an all-female team? From the get-go, there’s already a feeling of empowerment attached to this show from Mad Child Productions. 

It’s a devised play inspired by Anne Carson’s If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. Yes, that Sappho, the ancient Greek poet born in the Isle of Lesbos, who wrote about women’s experiences around love, friendship, and desire, and whose name the term “sapphic” is derived from.  

Karmic connections 

Ang Walang Hanggang Banyuhay Natin tells five stories, written by Mikaela Regis and the company, centered on female relationships. The audience is first introduced to a babaylan named Anggoran (Liway Perez) through a chilling entrance accompanied by a haunting chant. She pleads with the heavens to let her be with her true love, the Datu’s daughter Dayang Buka (Joy Delos Santos) who is engaged to be married to a man. 

When asked to choose between “pag-ibig”, love, and “kapangyarihan”, power, Babaylan Anggoran of course chooses the former. Despite this, fate tears them apart and she is left heartbroken. Perez’s performance stood out to this writer as she effectively took the audience with her through all the character’s stages of hope, desperation, and grief in just a short amount of time.  

But wait—it appears the heavens have not forgotten Babaylan Anggoran’s pleas after all! Their love is so powerful that even when reborn as different people, from various walks of life and stages of Philippine history, they are strongly connected—as revolutionaries during Martial Law (Perez and Ara Fernando), a mother and her college-age daughter discussing something “taboo” (Fernando and Teia Contreras), sisters processing the loss of a loved one (Contreras and Iman Ampatuan), and a pair meeting for the first time after connecting through a dating app (Ampatuan and Delos Santos). 

There were moments when it felt as if Contreras and Ampatuan were boxed into certain stereotypes—Contreras as the “young” vulnerable characters and Ampatuan as the loud, flamboyant ones. It would have been more impressive to see them be able to explore contrasting roles to truly show their range. 

Raw and intimate  

A dimly-lit performance space, with a cafe transformed into a black box theater and a seating capacity of less than 50, was the ideal setting for this show. Minimal set design by Julia Macuja and lighting by Gera Corpus allowed the audience to connect more intimately with the characters’ raw, relatable stories, with every tear shed clearly visible to viewers. Moving of set pieces and characters changing their costumes onstage were also integrated into the production to show the shift from one scene to another. 

Stories we should be telling 

The show’s strength lies in its subject matter as it touched on topics that are close to heart for many of us in this generation—dealing with anger at an unfair world and a corrupt government, coming to terms with mental illness, and the different ways people cope with grief. It also focused on the importance of having the freedom to explore one’s sexuality and the almost-unavoidable desire to find romantic connections. With Kat Batara’s direction, each of these points were clearly defined, albeit in a very in-your-face kind of way at times. 

The production was able to show that passionate, all-consuming, never-ending, sacrificial love that women freely give to people in their lives (most men, ehem, could never). Ang Walang Hanggang Banyuhay Natin is a little rough around the edges, but it’s telling stories that definitely need to be heard.  

 

Tickets: Php 850
Show Dates: October 11-19, 2024
Venue: Dark Roast Coffeehouse, Teachers Village, Quezon City
Running Time: approximately 1 hour and 30 mins (no intermission)
Credits: Anne Carson (Writer), Kat Batara (Director), Mikaela Regis (Playwright), Niña Bermio (Production Manager), Sabrina Basilio (Dramaturg), Mikee Alvero (Head Stage Manager), Julia Macuja (Production Designer), Christine Chiu (Assistant Stage Manager), Gera Corpus (Lighting Designer), Ria Querido (Technical Director), Angel Dayao (Sound Designer), Lian De Leon (Asst. Technical Director), Franz Manlutac (Graphic Designer), Iana Pineda (Front Of House Head), Jaennina (Photographer), Andrea Sudario (Sales Head), Nicole Chua and Jam Binay (Marketing Heads), and Zarah de los Santos (Marketing Assistant)
Cast: Liway Perez, Joy Delos Santos, Ara Fernando, Teia Contreras, and Iman Ampatuan
Company: Mad Child Productions