Context is everything

PANGANIBAN. Thespic glitch in her otherwise upbeat career.

Some portrayals in local drama series are quite viewable—except for their being found deficient on point of believability and context.

Sadly, the errors and thespic miscalculations involve some otherwise acclaimed actors—like Angelica Panganiban in “Pangako Sa ‘Yo.”

Before her character “died” a few months ago, we complained about the actress’ uncharacteristically and surprisingly “off” depiction of the lead character assigned to her (Claudia Buenavista), who ends up as the mother of the series’ teen male lead, Daniel Padilla.

Padilla looks like he’s in his early 20s, so we presumed that Angelica would slowly but steadily mature accordingly.

She did attempt to look a bit more “matronly” somewhere along the way, but definitely not enough to believably portray the mother of the now hefty and himself maturing former teen fave.

In any case, after Angelica’s character was killed off months ago, we felt that was the end of the unfortunate problem.

—But, we were recently thrown for a loop when it was improbably revealed that Daniel’s mother hadn’t died, after all, but had come back as an amnesiac named Greta!

‘Projecting’ younger

When Angelica reappeared as “Greta,” we were even more dismayed to see that she was “projecting” even younger than she did as Claudia.

Since that initial re-introduction, “Greta” regained her memory, so Claudia reentered the lives of the now romantically involved characters played by Jodi Sta. Maria and Ian Veneracion.

Therefore, problems related to believability and confusing context distracted viewers again, because Angelica looked even younger than before.

All this may sound like much ado about little, but it really isn’t, because viewers want and need to implicitly believe in and accept the character parameters being presented to them.

Quite ironically, prior to this thespic misstep, Angelica won plus points from us for her more judicious and spot-on portrayals in productions like “Santa-Santita,” “Here Comes the Bride,” “Beauty in A Bottle” and “That Thing Called Tadhana.”

“Pangako Sa ‘Yo” was supposed to be a “prestige” project for her, but her poor artistic judgment and execution in her recently concluded  TV starrer turned it into a thespic glitch in her otherwise upbeat career.

Lesson hopefully learned: Lack of “chronological credibility” is not an option.