There’s a magic, a spontaneity, that live theater offers that movies can never really capture. I love both, dearly, but while the power of film as a storytelling technique is how it uses the camera to capture the essence and truth about life and the human experience – the camera (and editing) being able to come close to the subject, distend time, connect images together – theater allows us to see it in front of us in real time. The narrative is unfolding right there, on the stage, and if one is so bold (and one should never) you could get up and touch it. It’s that presence, what cultural theorist Walter Benjamin would call art’s “aura,” that makes the theatrical experience like no other.

This aura is pushed beyond its limits in the masterpiece play ‘Request Program’ (or ‘Request Concert,’ depending on the translation), a 1973 play by Fran Xavier Kroetz. It’s a roughly 70+ minute play with absolutely no dialogue. Just one person coming home after what seems like a long day and we witness their evening activities before going to bed. No dialogue whatsoever except the character switching the radio on, giving us a clue to what lies underneath.

At the Samsung Performing Arts Theatre in Circuit, Makati, a revival of the play with distinctly Filipino touches has been reimagined as ‘Request sa Radyo’. The production stars both Lea Salonga and Dolly De Leon, who perform separate shows just an hour apart. It is produced by an incredible team, including theater director Bobby Garcia and stage and costume designer Clint Ramos, a 6-time Tony Award nominee and recipient of the Tony Award for Best Costume Design.

At the Samsung Performing Arts Theatre in Circuit, Makati, a revival of the play with distinctly Filipino touches has been reimagined as ‘Request sa Radyo’. The production stars both Lea Salonga and Dolly De Leon, who perform separate shows just an hour apart. It is produced by an incredible team, including theater director Bobby Garcia and stage and costume designer Clint Ramos, a 6-time Tony Award nominee and recipient of the Tony Award for Best Costume Design.

Theater, sometimes called Drama (as in “to dramatize” a story), usually follows an event, a complication or a struggle that can be enjoyable to watch or even disturbing, with the idea of evoking thought and emotion. It’s why we go to the theater or the movies: this never ending need to consume stories and to make it what we will. What separates ‘Request sa Radyo’ apart from almost all of the theater productions you’ve seen is that it asks us to observe and experience the mundane, the ordinary. 

The character simply enters her home – in this iteration, it’s a flat in New York, the character in hospital scrubs, either a doctor or a nurse, most probably a nurse – and settles in for the night. She cooks dinner – she actually prepares rice – and microwaves leftovers from the refrigerator. She washes a stain on her blouse while listening to the radio. Once in a while, she stares out into space. She eats her dinner. She cleans up. She does some art while listening to a radio station that markets specifically to Filipinos in America, playing mostly Tagalog songs and subtly creating the play’s narrative thrust.

In the hands of Lea Salonga, a multi-awarded theater luminary, the role takes on weight and meaning. You’re expecting her to sing at any moment, but she enters with heavy steps and not an ounce of glamour or sophistication on her. The silence is deafening and, oftentimes, as she’s waiting for the rice to cook, she stares out into space and there’s nothing there to fill up the empty space except the songs from the radio. Salonga’s character is so striking from how numb she seems to be. It felt like this was a performance for film, surprisingly, like you want to come in close to look straight into her eyes. I was seated far away, and I was fascinated by the absence of drama.

Until that unsurprising ending note, which you can feel is coming, but you aren’t quite sure why or how you know. 

‘Request sa Radyo’ is a brilliant piece of theater and that is demanding and thought-provoking. Garcia and Ramos create a space – an actual living space – where Salonga can cook and clean and be as ordinary as she can be and it builds such a strange rapport with the audience. I can’t even help it, but I found myself saying things like ‘Lea washes dishes differently than me’ or ‘I’d switch off some of the lights’ and finding myself connecting with the character in some form or another.

Despite the lack of dialogue, the role is so difficult because, despite the fact that four hundred people are watching her, Lea Salonga has to go through her character’s evening routine as if no one is watching her. It’s an acting exercise that is a true test of one’s skill and talent: to be completely un-self-conscious and to be completely ordinary and mundane for 70+ minutes. 

‘Request sa Radyo’ is a meditation on loneliness and longing. The art of theater and even movies is about voyeurism, but this amplifies it and highlights it where the play asks you to really just watch someone be without any real promise for a story. There is, though, if you look hard enough; and the experience is so riveting. 

My Rating:

Request sa Radyo is currently running for a strictly limited engagement at the Samsung Performing Arts Theatre in Circuit, Makati until October 20. For exclusive updates, including ticket sale releases, visit TicketWorld.