Francisca Muñoz, Caitlin Cisco, Alan Ariano and Diane Phelan in Felix Starro at Theatre Row, New York. Picture: Richard Termine
Felix Starro continues at Theatre Row, New York until 21 September 2019.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
New York’s Off and Off-Off Broadway Ma-Yi Theater Company began by presenting Filipino American plays (Ma-Yi is an ancient name for the Philippines) and later widened its mission to developing and producing new works by Asian American writers.
Now in celebration of its 30th year, the company returns to its roots with a production featuring a Filipino theme and more than that it marks the company’s first venture into musicals. It has not picked an easy piece.
Felix Starro deals with psychic surgery, a phenomenon that came to the forefront in the Philippines in the 1970s. Practitioners were featured on variety shows on the country’s television, and international celebrities, most notably Shirley MacLaine, were attracted to it.
In the practice, a faith healer, tying in saints and other heavenly folk into the process, operates on the body of the patient with just his hands, supposedly digging into the body to find and eliminate the negatives. Any wounds are immediately closed without pain or scaring. The practice brought hope to both pain-suffering Filipinos and foreigners with a heady mixture of the occult, religiosity, showbiz skulduggery and even politics, with backing from the country’s corrupt Marcos dictatorship.
A difficult topic indeed, and the good news is that the show, with book and lyrics by Jessica Hagedorn and music by Fabian Obispo, uses it to spin a tale that under the imaginative and sure-handed direction of Ma-Yi artistic director Ralph B. Peña engrosses with its sense of drama, humanity and musical theatre elevation.
Based on a short story by Lysley Tenorio, the show takes place in San Francisco in 1985, where the title character has come for a visit, as he has before, to practice his healing powers among the Filipino-American community.
But the aging healer has gone through some hard times. His reputation in the Philippines has fallen; a prominent patient has died, with relatives threatening Starro’s life, and doubts have mounted about the entire practice.
Nevertheless, San Franciscans desperate over health issues are excited by his return, and Starro hopes to rebuild his aura and his purse. His patients pay cash on the line.
Starro is accompanied by the grandson he raised and now relies on as his assistant, carrying his name but generally called Junior.
Junior, though, has his own agenda, adding a powerful contemporary resonance to the story. His girlfriend in the Philippines is urging him to stay in the US and bring her there. She has given him the name of a supplier of false papers, and Junior, reluctant to leave his grandfather unmoored, is uncertain about following through.
The confusion in Junior’s mind is further heightened when he sees his grandfather refuse to treat a victim of AIDS, despite the man’s near hysterical anxiety. It’s one of the first in a series of well-drawn incidents that make the narrative almost constantly compelling, even as it stays rather ambiguous on the matter of how we should feel about Starro and the false hopes he creates in those who come to him. Should we applaud him, despise him, or simply accept him, with the idea that even false hope is better than none?
The ambiguity is central to the strong performance by Alan Ariano as Starro, sometimes exuding leading man bravura, sometimes the doubts and anxiety of one whose place in the world has been lost. When we see him in an early ensemble number, ‘Medley of Maladies’, attending to a string of patients, he is an intriguing persona that’s part charlatan and part saviour.
Integral to the piece is the score. Several company numbers bubble with smart echoes of period pop along with hints of liturgical eeriness.
Hagedorn’s lyrics sometimes tend to lean a bit too heavily on repetition and listings. Nevertheless, she together with composer Obispo give the story’s varied characters surprisingly melodic numbers to express their inner feelings.
Junior, embodied in an appealing turn by Nacho Tambunting, has at least a trio of these, and he delivers them with a mounting passion and urgency, as he faces growing doubts about his revered grandfather and then the life he would lead in the US as an illegal immigrant with a false identity.
Other musical highlights include the soaring, Latin-rhythm aria, ‘Tango of Pain’, sung by Francisca Muñoz as the wealthy widow patient Mrs. Delgado. It’s a litany of ailments worthy of Carmen.
More quietly seductive is the spooky but alluring welcome to her flower shop sung by Ching Valdes-Aran as Flora Ramirez, who in addition to selling roses dispenses the false papers and identity Junior will need to the stay in the US.
Other notable turns come from Diane Phelan as Charma, Junior’s girlfriend in the Philippines who keeps popping up in his thoughts; Ryan James Ortega as both the aforementioned AIDS victim and the angry, disbelieving son of Mrs. Delgado, and Caitlin Cisco, as the cleaning girl in the fleabag hotel in which Starro has set up his San Francisco quarters.
Perhaps the only moment, but an important one, where the score falls short is Starro’s final number, closing the show. Where something cathartic might be expected exploring his own feelings about his years of deception and benevolence, he delivers simply an on-the-surface recount of the story: “Once upon a time/Not too long ago,/My rise to glory/Was fast and thrilling./Such an old story/My downfall/So chilling.”
But by then the show has made its strong points, aided immeasurably by the pulsating orchestrations by Paulo K. Tiról for the four-piece band under musical director Ian Miller lodged in the theatre’s small balcony.
There’s also a goodly amount of expressive if not very complicated choreography by Brandon Bieber, proficiently handled by the company as an ensemble.
Other assets are the atmospheric set by Marsha Ginsberg and moody lighting by Oliver Wason. Becky Bodurtha’s costumes effectively go from the glitz of a 1970s Filipino TV variety show to the various strata of San Francisco society.
Hailing itself as the first Off-Broadway musical created by Filipino Americans, Felix Starro makes its mark on many starry counts.
Ron Cohen
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