More medicine for the melancholy

The human condition can be so ghastly to the extreme that, in recompense, nature has gifted man with laughter. He alone of all creatures under God’s heaven laughs at the folly of his own kind. (The laughing hyena has no sense of humor.)

At the time when the country has become a dumping ground for drugs; when the military is in cahoots with the Abu Sayyaf bandits; when a senator is linked with the drug trade, summary executions, kidnapping for ransom and money-laundering; when the working-class keeps whining for a raise in wages and businessmen threaten to close shop; when our metropolis has become the garbage capital of the world; and when the economy remains in the doldrums, we need to girt our loins, keep our wits about us and maintain our sense of humor. Only in laughter – and in our faith – can we survive in our troubled times.

We Pinoys have a tremendous capacity for suffering. When the neighbor’s brat next door rob us of sleep by playing Slapshock or Chico Science in full volume, do we knock on his door to ask him politely to turn down the sound a little? When the jeepney driver plays his stereo much too loud, threatening to split our eardrums, do we ask him to tone it down a little? Not likely. We suffer in silence. But when we are finally driven against the wall, we react with the balisong or the paltik. Good thing that we have a sense of humor that saves us from jail or the nuthouse. We do feel the need to laugh to keep our sanity.

The plays of Repertory Philippines on its 63rd season have been selected with care for their entertainment value. Its line-up this season is sure to keep the William J. Shaw Theater at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall and the Carlos P. Romulo Theater at the RCBC Plaza in Makati ringing with laughter.

Rep’s second offering this season is Abe Burrow’s comedy, Cactus Flower. If this title sounds familiar, you might have seen the movie sometime in the ‘60s. Directed by Gene Saks, the film starred Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman and Goldie Hawn, who won an Oscar for best supporting actress.

In her Director’s Notes, Zeneida Amador says: "People have been telling us they want to see comedies these days because life is not exactly funny now. A survey of theater-goers really showed their preference for musicals and comedies." One subscriber put it this way. He said ‘life offers us so much crime and corruption. If you read the newspapers we are daily abused by circumstances. Do I have to pay good money to be abused some more?’ Well, I guess he has a point there."

If laughter is the best medicine, as the old saying goes, then Rep’s production of Cactus Flower is a pound of aspirin, or if you prefer, a jar of laughing pills.

What’s funnier than a philandering bachelor in the prime of his life who is fooling around with a pretty young miss on a regular basis whom he has duped into believing that he already has a wife and kids just in case the girl suddenly gets the notion that she wants to march to the altar with him to the music of Mendelssohn? Wouldn’t it be ironic if he has a change of mind and decides that he wants to tie the knot with her after all even when he is considering dating a blonde Swedish stewardess? Wouldn’t it complicate matters if the girl wants to meet his wife first to make sure that his "marriage" is really on the rocks anyhow and she wouldn’t be a home-wrecker?

Does the guy (who happens to be a dentist) think that extricating himself from this mess is as easy as extracting a molar by convincing his secretary (who happens to be a nurse) to pass herself off as his "ex-wife" and meet his bride-to-be? Isn’t it also ironic that when the girl meets the "ex-wife," she is charmed no end by the lady that she begins to see her intended groom as a scumbag? Do we feel sorry for the dentist when he gets entangled in his own lies, when he finds that his scheme is turning out to be not as simple as pulling out a tooth but doing a root canal? Is it another twist of fortune when he dumps his girl and turns his attention on his nurse? And aren’t we all delighted when everything comes to a happy end – when the girl ends up with the dashing hunk in the next apartment who saves her from gassing herself in the opening scene and the dentist winds up with his nurse in the last?

Director Amador has assembled an ideal cast for this production of Cactus Flower. Ana Abad Santos-Bitong’s Toni Simmons may not look like someone who tends a classical CD bar in Greenwich Village and rolls up her eyes when she hears Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor but she comes across like a bottle of cough syrup, if you know what that means. Arnel Carrion’s Igor Sullivan may not make it on Broadway as a playwright but dressed only in a bath towel, he’d be a smash hit as a Chippendales recruit.

Rep veteran Miguel Faustmann makes of his role as the dentist, Dr. Julian Winston, a shot of novocaine that can make a dental patient hum Albinoni during a root canal. As for Joy Virata, another Rep stalwart, she makes Stephanie Dickinson look as comfortable in a nurse’s white uniform and Florence Nightingale cap or as elegant and deadly as belladonna in a black mink stole.

The rest of the cast, Cathy Azanza (alternate: Tess Michelena), Meynard Penalosa, George Ramos and the others need to be jumping jelly beans to keep the laughs going.

This is one heck of a Cactus Flower that will not only tickle but prick your funny bone.

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For comments and suggestions, e-mail jessqcruz@hotmail.com.