Call me a cry-baby. I don't care.
I got teary-eyed when the TV screen showed footage of people wading in neck deep flood waters. There I was with my wife to watch PETA's hit musical, Rak of Aegis, and I was tearing up three minutes into the play. The play struck a chord in me. Memories of Ondoy came flooding back.
But when the colorful characters of Villa Venizia started belting out familiar Aegis songs, I cut short my Ondoy melancholy and got swept away by the play's amazing narrative, stellar performances, engaging musical arrangement, spot-on design and crisp direction.
Rak of Aegis follows the story of Aileen (Aicelle Santos), a promodizer, who dreams of becoming a YouTube hit. She lives in Villa Venizia, a community still submerged in neck-deep flood three months after a typhoon. Aileen completes a love triangle with Kenny (Myke Salomon), the village hearthrob and Tolits (Pepe Herrera), the village nobody. Aileen's father, Kiel (Robert Sena) is at odds with barangay captain Mary Jane (Isay Alvarez) who is the main provider of income for the many families in Villa Venizia. She owns a small-scale shoe factory. She also happens to be Kiel's old flame. Mary Jane is also at odds with her son, Kenny.
When Aileen's YouTube video goes viral, media flock to Villa Venizia and poverty tourism begins. Meanwhile, Engr. Fernan (Nor Domingo), a developer of a nearby subdivision that is seen as the culprit for Venizia's flooding woes, coaxes Mary Jane to stage a concert with Aileen as the star. On concert night, the flood water subsides, preventing the villagers to raise funds for their health center.
Kiel complains that it is wrong to use their miserable condition as an excuse to be entrepreneurial. He chides Aileen for choosing the concert even if her mother, Mercy (Neomi Gonzales), is recovering from leptospirosis. In a brilliant ensemble performance, the characters find a way to resolve the conflict. Indeed, they are "basang-basa sa ulan" (drenched in the rain) but they know that as the sun rises, they need to work together and re-define what it means to be truly resilient.
Rak of Aegis may have started as a joke as director Maribel Legarda pointed out. But the joke is not lost in the play's disturbing commentary about our penchant to take advantage of and misappropriate our innate resilience as a people. Playwright Liza Magtoto said she risked sounding unpopular with her belief that resilience should not be the "sole golden virtue" that we can use to survive and overcome disasters in our lives.
Rak of Aegis, indeed, goes beyond resilience. Because as the Aegis song "Luha" ends: "Sana bukas ay nasa ibabaw naman (Tomorrow I hope, I will be on top.) When the flood is gone, the real work of rebuilding lives begins.
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