Stellar performances compared

From time to time, we tweak even our most popular actors, like Piolo Pascual and Coco martin, for holding back and coming up with merely cool portrayals.

Most instructively, on their respective drama series last week, Piolo and Coco turned in contrasting performances that clearly exemplify what we’re talking about:

On “Hawak-Kamay,” Piolo’s character collapsed in Korea, and when he woke up, doctors sadly informed him that he had a serious and even potentially fatal liver disease.

PASCUAL. “Risky” thespic decision

In the past, faced with an emotionally “extreme” dramatic situation like that, Piolo would get his intense feelings going—but stop short of a full breakdown, perhaps because he (wrongly) thought that it wasn’t “seemly” for a male actor to emotionally go “all the way.”

Last week, however, Piolo did take that extra thespic step and sobbed intensely as the full impact of the “death sentence” that had just been “read” to him hit him—hard.

Instead of looking “OA” or over-the-top, Piolo’s performance was fully felt, so it was moving and forceful, the best he’s come up with to date!

Contrastingly, Coco had an even more dauntingly emotional thespic challenge on “Ikaw Lamang”: He had just learned that his long-lost

father, played by Joel Torre, had been shot dead, and his reaction was even deeper and more painful than Piolo’s, because he had only recently been reunited with Joel.

So, we understood why Coco’s breakdown while embracing his father’s body was so deep, intense and loud. It shook him to the very core of his being, and that was OK, too, because his loss was so great.

—However, after a while, the thespic point had already been fully, loudly and even violently made—but Coco was still at it, ululating for all he was worth.

Was the actor ever going to stop? It took many more seconds before the intensely emotional display finally ended.

The fact that he didn’t stop after the point was fully made suggests that his artistic judgment is not as reliable as it needs to be, so he should focus on strengthening it. —Lesson learned!