Amid the dark, ‘Flipzoids’ stirs deep melancholy

PHOTOS BY EMMIE G. VELARDE/INQUIRER

MANILA, Philippines – Two seconds was all it took for the two actors on stage to decide what to do when the power went out: Carry on. It was a good call.

Becca Godinez and Maxwell Corpus proceeded to deliver their lines in the dark, and the rapt audience at the Music Museum in Greenhills on Thursday responded with a respectful hush. The lights floundered this way and that as it found its way back to the evening’s presentation of “Flipzoids.” There wasn’t room for the faintest gasp, it seemed as there wasn’t a thread of dialogue to be missed.

Godinez, Corpus and Ellen Williams are the stars of the play (authored by Fil-Am Ralph Pena), whose brief (three days) Manila run ends this Saturday night. Godinez had brought “Flipzoids” from Los Angeles, California to Manila via her own GODinus Productions.

“How could I not?” she said— the exact same way she felt when offered the role of Aying, a 72-year-old immigrant in the United States.

Described as a “dramedy” in previous reviews, “Flipzoids” did elicit crackling laughter from, and stirred deep melancholy in, the first-night spectators at MM. How many (or how few) Filipinos do not have relatives or friends in that Promised Land across the Pacific?

Here we have three such immigrants, each one running—one after assimilation; the second, away from alienation; the third, toward her former life.

Godinez’s character declares that the seawater she lovingly plays with in Southern California is the same water in Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte (cradle of her memories, now her reveries) and the audience is hers.

When the play approaches a high “emo” level, some familiar Pinoy-in-America joke is thrown in, which then melts into a stinging slur (for instance, “We’re called ‘Flips’—or fucking little island people”), so no one forgets what is on the table for discussion.

And we bet post-performance discussions invariably ensue, especially here in Aying’s beloved Homeland. The Manila run is directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera, Fil-Am founder of Playwrights’Arena in LA.

Rivera, Godinez, Corpus and Williams have come home for this. We are thankful.

(Tickets from P1,142 to P2,284, via ticketworld.com.ph/flipzoids)