More comeback gambits for maturing stars

Jolina Magdangal and Marvin Agusti

We’re glad that Jolina Magdangal has made a successful comeback, with new projects lined up for 2017.

On top of those stellar vehicles, however, we hope that she can come up with a new stage musical or TV musical special, with Leo Rialp directing.

We’re urging Jolina to do this, because many years ago, we watched a musical special she and Rialp did for ABS-CBN, and it was one of the best stellar showcases we ever saw her in.

Her gifted and creative director obviously pushed her to her limits, with her consent, of course, and the “finished product” was superb.

Now that she’s a “maturing” star, Jolina needs another great showcase to “remind” viewers how exceptional her “total” performing talents are.

We’re also suggesting a new stage musical project, because Filipino theater needs all the good stellar help it can get to become as popular and preferred as it deserves to be, so it isn’t “colonially” being upstaged by foreign material and productions, as it still is to this unenlightened day.

As for Jolina’s “signature” screen partner, Marvin Agustin, he’s also made a good comeback, but our wish for him is to figure out how to continue making his thespic mark, now that his biggest career booster, Marilou Diaz-Abaya, is no longer with us.

Marvin did quite a number of religious dramas for Marilou, impressing everyone with how good an actor he had become, in a series of very challenging roles that brought out the best in him.

The key question now is, how can he sustain that upward thespic trajectory without Marilou’s support?

It can be done, but with greater thought, planning and good judgment. Now comes the hard part.

Welcome shift

The youngest member of the cast of the TV action-drama series, “Ang Probinsyano,” is child actor Xymon Pineda.

Viewers dote on him not just because he’s cute and spunky, but also because he looks “real,” like their own kids.

He is a welcome departure from the usual tisoy child performers on local TV and film screens, and his popularity is a good sign that our viewers are “growing up.”

After acting in the series for months now, however, litte Xymon has gotten mired in his screen character’s “feisty” and “sassy” persona, which has ended up in making him come on too strongly and easily, and thus limiting the ability of his performance to surprise and delight.

We were heartened, therefore, when Xymon was made to radically change his performance tack, when his character was involved in a bombing incident.

Injured and traumatized, he was in a coma for a long time—and, when he finally regained consciousness, he was a ghost of his former spunky self.

He was stressed and scared  all the time, hardly ever spoke, and appeared to have lost the will to live—a far cry from his “livewire” personality of yore.

The big, “traumatic” shift was good for the child actor, because it enabled him to give his feisty screen persona a break, and instead play it scared and stressed.

This gave him the opportunity to prove that he was more than just a kneejerk “streetsmart” player, but had the instinctive artistic depth to understand the traumatized boy he was playing.

Xymon’s character has already regained his “signature” love for life—but, he’s also learned from and been changed by the experience. So, he’s no longer completely what he used to be—and, that’s a good thing.