Theater Play: Coriolano

Based on a Shakesperian tragedy Coriolanus, Coriolano is it's Filipino adaptation which as I've researched performed as in Wikipedia in times of political turmoil. Talk about being extremely timely. As much as I would like to delve into that there's too much noise around it already so let's just discuss the play instead.

*Spoilers at this paragraph down here:

Here's a compressed plot: Coriolano was a courageous Roman general who was enjoying success on merit. His downfall started when he was pushed by his mother to politics unto which his detractors defeat him through gossip and lies which again wasn't a difficult feat because he was already infamous among the masses being impatient towards them and short tempered. At his lowest he found himself amongst the enemies, joined them to defeat the Romans until his mom Volumnia convinces him to spare them. This obviously didn't sit well with the side who held him up at his lowest and so he was killed. Simply put it was like Cinderella only backwards and involves tons of killing and him dying in the end.

When I think about it the story itself is appropriate for us Filipinos now. I mean sure, we couldn't possibly exonerate truly corrupt officials who were peppered in gossip in hopes that maybe he's (or she's!) just a victim of other "silent players" like what happened to Coriolano but if there's something we could ALL agree on is politics is much much more complex than what we think, more so if we only know the only side we heard first and agree on. From the play you could see how it was easy to sway the masses on whether they really like Coriolano or not and on a side note it would have been really funny if he started dancing and swooning at the stage ala politikos (hey come to think about it 2019 Elections almost here!). But this is a serious play and personally I believe that's where the problem starts.

I am not sure what's wrong here, am I too young to remember or am I too old to know proper Filipino? It took me a long time to acclimate on the tone and dialogues and it's not even remotely funny. I find myself wondering why I could not understand a thing maybe 10 minutes running that it was hard for me to focus, heck my mind shut itself when I was trying to remember what siphayo means. I feel like I'm an uncultured swine! I mean how do these kids around me (we were on a Saturday block, it looks like a required field trip) understand an ounce of this? And the dialogues. Man that was torture. I'm being honest here, but I am just not a fan of extreme drama genre, the one where all the actors have to cry and deliver 5 minute long monologues without oozing snot (I'm looking at you old school Filipino drama movies!). Now Coriolano have TONS OF THEM! Again, uncultured swine. I don't want to be bulked up in the millenial group but this is just one of those things I have no, like 0 tolerance with. To me all monologues that last more than 5 sentences, if it wasn't sang (like in Musicals) felt like nagging. Brain just stops to function. I understand that they're trying to make a point, to make you understand the essence of the monologue. But I just can't. It really doesn't help when 90% of the words are words that I haven't heard before or was ever used in conversations with  me in the last 30 years of my life. I tried to love it but how? At this point I would really love some subtitles there just so I can appreciate the practice and memorization that went on to this. I mean, they updated the costumes, why didn't they with the dialogues? You know what? I am just SUPER glad I'm not any of the students who needed to pass a report by Monday. I watched this last February, and held up posting about it so that those kids won't see my reaction to this in case this comes up in google searches. I just hope none of my old Lit teachers find out though.