NDR

A couple of nights ago, I got to watch North Diversion Road again, This time, in full.

A lot of things were different from the first time I watched. For one thing, the place was packed, which meant that the off-beat easy-going ambiance was gone. But, front-of-house was friendlier this time (and far more attractive and engaging), and there were souvenir programs that looked like road maps. I'm not sure if those were there the first time around.

The play itself was a well-executed emotional roller coaster. There were a few technical glitches. the passenger side microphone seemed to be fluctuating, as there were occasions wherein I, sitting at front row, could barely make out what the actress was saying. There was an occasion wherein, after the actor motioned to turn on the radio, nothing happened; though, that could have been deliberate. However, other than the few odd nit-picks, there was no real technical problem.

From a perspective in the seats, the play left few audience members emotionally untouched. The guy next to me could barely speak Tagalog (the play's lingua franca), and even he was deep in thought throughout most of the play.

(Spoiler warning)

The play contains ten scenes, all revolving around the singular premise of possible reactions to the discovery by a wife that her husband is cheating on her. The first eight scenes contained plays on emotion suitable for an open road analogy; straightforward and unyielding.

The first scene had the wife icily confronting the husband, rattling out what an ideal marriage ought to be, then grimly accepting the facts with a determination to carry on. The scene was almost positively Victorian, right down to the stiff upper lip of the emotionally restrained wife. One gets the feeling that underneath the shackles of denial lay a volcanic rage barely acknowledged.

The second scene was a stereotypical cry-fest, with a distraught wife and a whipped husband exchanging tear-filled accusations and overwrought remorse. If one did not get the sense that this was deliberate, it would have come across as over-acted, all the way down to the eclectic accents. The hand-wringing and tear-jerking end on a rather positive note, with the wife pausing mid-diatribe to ask her husband if the apologies were really meant. Fortunately, the play cuts off to the next scene before any answer is given.

The third and fourth scenes were variations on anger. The third scene was a prolonged shouting match, wherein the audience are treated to the rare occurrence of the male actually out-talking the female. The fourth scene is almost all silence, but to the credit of the actor and the actress, it came across as no less angry and far more subtle than the previous scene.

The fifth scene was an interesting scenario. Husband and wife, after the secret comes out that hubby was nailing tail on the side, decide on a suicide pact. That both are portrayed as pragmatic, clear-eyed intellectuals adds to the delicious irony; here are two would-be Einsteins who literally think themselves to death. The last few moments of the scene, wherein husband and wife kiss for the last time, comes off as rather comic. Yes, when nerds kiss, its like losing that damned virginity all over again.

The sixth scene involved a rather absurdly happy couple. The wife reveals that she knows of the husband's affair, and doesn't break stride when she informs him that she plans to return the infidelity in turn. The husband's facade of happy cracks just enough to tell the audience that the situation, for all intents and purposes, is a mindfuck in a handbag.

The seventh scene, the most emotionally poignant of the first eight, has a husband barreling down the expressway with his wife just fresh out of a mental institution. He talks to his wife sporadically, acknowledging the indiscretions that caused her mental break down. In between abject contrition and blank stares, he seeks sympathy by talking to people over a ham radio, due to his inability to have a decent conversation with his drugged up wife. It is far more emotionally-wrenching than the maudlin second scene, and is a showcase for the range and ability of the two actors onstage.

The eight was just the wife executing the husband with a Glock. While the gun shot sound effect drew some gasps from the crowd, it is the weakest scene of the first eight. It even comes off as rather cliched. Although, it is but one three-minute cliche in two hours' worth of play.

The first eight scenes serve as prelude to the last two scenes. The straightforward emotionality of the these scenes, and their subsequent arrangement, somehow brings to mind the Kubler-Ross model of dealing with grief. The first eight scenes roughly correlate into five stages of grief: the first two scenes with denial, the third and fourth with anger, the fifth and sixth with bargaining, the seventh with depression, and the eight as some form of bitter and darkly humorous acceptance.

The last two scenes are the heart and soul of the entire play. In the first of the last two, a newly-married songwriter drives down the expressway with the woman he commissions to sing his compositions. The scene is sprinkled with reminders of the first eight scenes, seamlessly integrated into the narrative. The two people in the car eventually end up confessing to each other, the man his romantic and metaphysical predilections and the woman her secret desire for him. When the woman says she might be in love with him, he replies cryptically, "baka maligaw ka sa lawak ng pag-ibig ko". (Roughly, "you might get lost in the vastness of my affections.")

In the final scene, the same man is driving down the same road, but this time with his wife and not his would-be mistress. They are headed to the mountain provinces, hoping to find a faith healer for the cancer-stricken wife. The man whose vast fields of affection now finds himself with an affection magnified into complete devotion and the wide fields reduced to the vastness of a singular flower. As his wife wonders at the sanity of their endeavor, the man slowly breaks down and admits his infidelity with the woman from the previous scene. The wife looks at him, almost serenely, and in a course of action not considered through eight scenes worth of conventional reactions to infidelity, forgives him completely and utterly. There is no trace of resentment, no hidden geyser of anger comparable to the couple of the first scene. She even suggests that, once she dies, the man marry his mistress. Forgiveness proves to be both a light and heavy burden, lighter than the paltry gains of bargaining and heavier than the thrashes of rage. Forgiveness unnerves and emotionally strips the husband bare, sharpening the vast field into a singular ray of devotion to but one subject; his wife. It is the strength and subtlety of this final scene that transform the entire play from one about infidelity into one ultimately about love itself. All the emotions of the earlier scenes are purged in a flood of cathartic release, and for one desperate moment, all seems right in the world.

I cannot overstate the strength of the performances of both actors here. Martin de la Paz and Frankie Pascua outdo themselves, surpassing the superlative, if incomplete, performance from the first time around. Credit must also go to Mr. Vallez for bringing all the elements together as director. However, the greatest credit of all is reserved for the playwright, Tony Perez, whose work simply demands that it be performed well, or not at all.

When I came out of the place, the night felt just right.

North Diversion Road returns on January. For details, head here.

***

PS

So, X, how was that? Are we good?