After the success of musical and country loving theme of their recent plays like Orosman at Zafira, Isang Panaginip na Fili and Rizal X, Dulaang UP of the University of the Philippines – Diliman is now staging a tragedy at the Wilfredo Ma. Guerero Theater in the Palma Hall of UP Diliman from September 14 – October 2. This bloody and mind boggling Filipino adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus with an alternate title of “Tinarantadong Asintado” was directed by Tuxqs Rutaquino and written by Layeta Bucoy. It features actors including Bembol Roco, Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino, Mailes Kanapi, Paolo O’Hara, Nicco Manalo, Cris Pasturan, Delphine Buencamino, Mike Tan, Arnold Reyes, Ross Pesigan and Paolo Cabanero with special participation of Eula Valdes.
The setting and character were substituted with a Filipino set up, but the core of the story which are revenge, deception and greed for power and the only way to win is to outnumber their enemies. Until they discover that the mastermind is just there beside them, cooking delicious bait that they will never forget – a sweet revenge that they will never forget. The Filipino adaptation was set in a certain province during the height of election campaign. It follows 3 major characters; the retired municipality chief Ricardo “Carding” Munoz (originally Titus), Vice Mayor Armando Torres (originally Saturninus) and influential church devotee Clarissa Castillo (originally Tamora). Like to original Titus Andronicus, Clarissa plotted her revenge against Carding and his alliance where she marries Armando to get their allegiance and with Chua (originally Aaron) uses everyone from Carding’s group to kill each other. But instead of the meat pie, Dulaang UP uses digunuan or pork blood stew as the dish where Carding uses the meat of Clarissa’s two sons who raped and tortured Salve (originally Lavinia) and killed her fiancée Antonio (originally Bassianus).
Following with the concept of the original Titus Andronicus, DUP executed the prosthetics perfectly to make it real and visual on how brutal the story was. I had to commend on the beautiful portrayal of Bembol especially during scene where he explain to Arnold the symbolism of cooking the pork blood stew on plotting revenge against their enemies and also the final scene during the dinner. Also Mailes, Nicco, and Delphine did a great performance of the play. Mailes showed how crazy Clarissa could be, Delphine showing the pain that Salve encountered in the hands of Clarissa’s son and later the ending of that pain and lastly Nicco who played the clown where he shifted to different emotions and delivering the lines brilliantly which shows how as mad is the story of Titus Andronicus really was.
There are two kinds of presentation that Dulaang UP presented, there are the actual bloody scenes at the evening performance (7pm) and there’s the quite sanitize version in the morning/afternoon schedule (10am and 3pm). So catch the crazy and bloody presentation of the Filipino adaptation William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus presented by Dulaang UP at the Wilfredo Ma. Guerero Theater, Palma Hall. Ticket cost Php160 for the UP students and Php250 for non UP students.
