‘Ensemble’ casts come to the fore

KETCHUP Eusebio scores as the lead character’s best buddy in “Dream Dad.”

In the past, interest in TV-film performance was limited to individual portrayals. These days, however, the focus has expanded to include “ensemble” or group portrayals. On the big screen, movies with big, all-star casts featuring many cameo roles, like “Love, Actually,” “New Year’s Eve,” “The Player” and “The Longest Day,” have even been cited for group portrayals.

On TV, some teleseryes bank on the textured and varied performances of supporting actors who cumulatively evoke an entire neighborhood, subculture or “syndrome.”

For instance, on “Forevermore,” one of the main attractions is the ensemble work of the 20 or so supporting actors who play the characters who work on the vegetable farm run by Joey Marquez’s character.

This ensemble is particularly enlivened by the presence of a wide range of actors, from a small boy to a really old coot who’s given to toothlessly pontificating on anything and everything, with exuberant feistiness and panache!

MIKAEL Daez and Andrea Torres in “Lihim
ni Annasandra”

On “Dream Dad,” the ensemble is made up of the diverse bunch of people working at two separate locales, a dairy farm and the corporate offices of a dairy company. At the farm, the characters are appropriately rough and ready, while the corporate locale features high-tech types. A third locale is the orphanage in which the drama series’ resident moppet, Baby, is cared for.

Of all of this new series’ regular players, the standouts include Ketchup Eusebio as Zanjoe Marudo’s best buddy, Ana Feleo as the social worker in charge of the orphanage, and Beauty Gonzales as Alex, Zanjoe’s workaholic office assistant. Beauty makes a stronger impression than Maxene Magalona, who’s cast as the male protagonist’s “presumptive” girlfriend.

Other now-concluded series with notable ensemble casts included “Ang Dalawang Mrs. Real,” with its large cast of senior actors playing the younger leads’ feisty parents, who also got in on the convoluted melodramatic action.

In some instances, however, a large ensemble cast doesn’t necessarily mean good dramatics, as in the case of “The Half-Sisters” and “Lihim ni Annasandra.”

BARBIE Forteza and Thea Tolentino in “Half Sisters”

Because those series’ casts are boxed in by their stereotypical roles, “more” ends up being much too much!

Despite these downbeat aspects, the ensemble acting trend should be encouraged. If handled well, it provides the texture, range and relative depth that so many exclusively “star-oriented” series are in great need of.

Local TV-film stars are mostly “personality” players rather than adept at creating a wide range of characters. So, for the “texture,” “color” and “flavor” that many drama series lack, ensemble players have to step into the wide and yawning break, and do the honors.

They provide the “feel” and tempo of life being lived in the real world not in the usual star-oriented vacuum—and reality-starved viewers respond to their colorful and flavorful antics with delight—and relief!

The ensemble players may not be all that popular or even recognizable, but they are sometimes a drama series’ main cause for seeing!