REVIEW BY ROBERT ENCILA CELDRAN
PHOTOS FROM SANDBOX COLLECTIVE
There’s a humble and crafty little play that packs a heavy punch, the likes of which typically escape public notice. It involves two actors and a script that cuts away all manner of artifice to reveal nothing but unbridled theatrical wonder.
The cast is identified only as M and W, an urban couple in their 30s with a refined worldliness ascribed to the progressive yuppie class. He’s a musician and she’s a doctoral student. We like to assume they’re secular humanists, shop organic and drink Fair Trade coffee. They eschew single-plastic use, and if they’re not vegan they probably spend the extra cash for kosher turkey and grass-fed beef. They discuss their feelings with resolute honesty, a practice that hedges between virtue and neurosis.
And don’t get her started on climate change and environmental decline or you’re in for a dissertation on planetary doom and human culpability.
At the onset, they appear to be the sort of company you might pass up on dinner with. She’s loquacious to a fault and he’s insufferably henpecked. But we know this about good playwriting: it’s an expository conceit certain to beguile us for a reason, because rest assured there’s sufficient redemption that lets us fall in love with the couple before long.
“Lungs” is Duncan MacMillan’s 90-minute two-hander about a young couple grappling with the existential crisis of first-world proportions. It’s a fine collaborative experiment between The Sandbox Collective and 9 Works Theatrical.
Central to the play’s thesis is the imposing challenge of whether or not to have a child in a world that’s looking bleaker by the day. Actually, it’s a dilemma that proves more ubiquitous than not--but W being an obsessive-compulsive logician, we can see why it’s prudent to think child-rearing through, what with aggressive climate change and economic anxiety the only possible inheritance this generation is poised to leave behind.
So here are two earnest individuals who genuinely love each other and whose simple endgame is to be “good people” in spite of their aggravating inclination to overthink every issue under the sun.
It’s a bare stage, mind you. Not a single prop, a costume change, or a blackout to suggest any scene transition, save for occasional specials that crossfade for locale emphasis.
MacMillan’s unorthodox style is either an actor’s dream or nightmare. Multiple scenes span across several years — transporting the couple from a random IKEA checkout stand to their car, which takes them home and into the living room where they talk anxiously about having a baby and other pressing items, then perhaps out again to let off steam and dance in a local bar. It goes on—from a hospital delivery room to his workplace and to their unexpected run-in at the residence of another woman of interest (after M is forced to leave W due to irreconcilable issues); and finally to discover them reunited, back on their bed (the floor) slathered in post-coital bliss.
All this is achieved in a small imaginary space and with absolutely no pantomime allowed.
Yet somehow we follow along with no internal questions asked. It’s reminiscent of those improvised open scenes in acting class designed to convey intention and navigate conflict. The scenes are ultimately about problem solving and character arc.
It’s a mercurial device, and McMillan's attendant lesson is a sobering revelation: stripping these actors of the usual stagecraft elements compels them to abandon pretenses so that they’re made to confront the truth as their only viable and urgent choice.
Which brings us to the emotional eloquence of two sensible actors that lend fierce adherence to the text and an ardent commitment to one another: Sab Jose and Jake Cuenca.
Fresh out of the musical theatre gate as Michelle in the recently concluded “ETO NA! Musikal n’APO,” (also by 9 works Theatrical), Sab Jose glides into a difficult role with versatile aplomb. She talks incessantly and drives a majority of the dialogue as she is obviously charged with the task of identifying today's most relevant problems, both personal and global. Her pacing is urgent but we trust her to slow down long enough to absorb the changing moods, especially as it involves her partner’s input. Her changed demeanor in the latter part of the play, as W reaches out to reconcile with M, is poignant. It reflects the transformation that results from a life-changing tragedy (I wouldn't dare spoil the story with that detail).
Jake Cuenca is a refreshing new discovery on stage. A film and television star, he wears the confidence of a seasoned thespian and a vulnerable quality that he seems to have tapped to flesh out his character’s inner strength. As M, he already looks quite masculine, but we're drawn even closer to the sensitive man who actively listens and fights for his beloved.
No doubt Andrei Nikolai Pamintuan (director) and Caisa Borromeo (assistant director) had something to do with the satisfying synthesis of these complex characters. They have shaped a believable relationship between people whose future we actually care about.
The small arena space at Power MAC Spotlight Center lends itself ideally to McMillan's minimalist construct. It also brings its own problems as actors are required to wield the attention of an audience seated around the raised, square stage.
The obstacle in question has less to do with when to shift blocking positions and more to do with why they must shift. Composition involving two people is a function of who gets the upper hand at any given moment. I would challenge the directors to revisit, clarify, and perhaps tweak those positions to determine how the constant shift in power is reflected by the geometry of the staging--e.g., who is up or down, who is facing what direction, who is behind whom, and why. You can never fully satisfy everybody in the round, anyway, so the line of focus should always come first.
All in all, the eager crowd on preview night was given a brutal dose of honest moral inventory, courtesy of two exceedingly generous actors who owned the space and seized our interest. In this sprawling metropolis where live entertainment is dominated by spectacle and pageantry, it's rewarding to get a reprieve and meditate on the intimate lessons of a small show with a big heart.
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