‘Dedma’: when Titas lose their poise
One of the lines we’ll never forget from gossip past is a socialite’s amusing account of a catfight that she witnessed: “Entonces, un hair pulling incident!,” describing the denouement of an encounter between a high society wife and the mistress of her husband. This legendary incident came to mind when we heard about Dedma, Theatre Tita’s twinbill of short plays, Let’s Do Lunch and The Foxtrot, both written by Chesie Galvez-Cariño. The first one, in particular, was supposed to feature two “ladies who lunch” in a story that involves a scandal. In a country where dining and chismis are the default pastimes and Maritess has become the viral name for the neighborhood rumormonger, how could one let this presentation pass?
The subject of the vicious gossip is Issa (Issa Litton), who has been invited by BFF Val (Naths Everett) to her home after a long estrangement. It turns out that Issa’s husband has been implicated in a financial scam of sorts that has made them nouveau pauvre and pariahs in their social circle. Why did Val even reconnect with her after so long? Genuine friendship? information gathering straight from the horse’s mouth? To gloat?
Probably all of the above, as Everett portrays her—comfortable in her charmed life and friends in the same league, turning a blind eye to her husband’s indiscretions so long as she can wield her credit cards to buy the latest status bags that she treats like her “babies.” For her conscience, she easily brandishes her checkbook for a standard 100K check for charity.
The beneficiary this time is Issa, who accepted the lunch invite as a chance to sell insurance to Val and the rest of the gang, but the others didn’t even show up, and she could not even get Val to listen to her sales pitch since she and her husband are now considered financially untrustworthy. Litton does Issa with a large dose of class and dignity while eating humble pie but the inner “biatch” still surfaces and is unleashed with devastating force.
What started as a pleasant lunch turns into an afternoon of verbal skirmishes and recriminations, but done with Cariño’s witty pen and turned into an engaging blow-by-blow match under the direction of Maribel Legarda. One gets invested in the characters of this play because of their many facets that are revealed, together with their backstories, achieving a verisimilitude through what the playwright says are “amalgamations of family, friends and acquaintances, whose stories sometimes amuse me, or sometimes make me weep.”
The second play, Foxtrot, is another case in point. Just like Cariño, who has an aunt who forgets all her worries on the dance floor, most of us also have that relative or friend who has fallen for the charms of the DI (dance instructor), immortalized in the 1996 film Bayarang Puso (Heart for Hire), starring Aga Muhlach. But Diego (JC Santos) is not the one-dimensional DI of gossip circles, nor is Anna (Jacki Lou Blanco) the stereotypical society matrona who gets victimized by a dancing gigolo.
Diego and Anna actually have a friendship that developed on the dance floor but this is their last dance as they practice for a competition, after which Diego is off to San Francisco to marry his fiancée. Anna dreads being endorsed to Diego’s instructor friend and convinces him to cancel the wedding. What begins as a breezy practice session suddenly turns testy as underlying feelings are exposed and deliberated upon. Can such an intimate, physical activity really remain professional and platonic for long?
The beauty of this play is how the articulation of the relationship and the dialogue is expressed through dance, which is the couple’s personal language that Paul Morales choreographs and directs with organic precision—from the easygoing, friendly interaction in the beginning to moments filled with tension, resistance and surrender.
The actors also negotiate these shifts wonderfully, with an interplay of emotions that keep you guessing what is going on or how this will all end.
Santos skillfully embodies and conveys all the complexities of Diego—he has a sure thing with his betrothed yet he enjoys and values what he has with Anna. While they’re together in the studio, he’s confident, but when the possibility that there could be something more surfaces, his insecurities come out, together with feelings of resentment over why things cannot be out in the open.
Blanco plays the privileged client convincingly, as well as the transition to one who has lost her composure when she suddenly is not sure where she stands, as Diego reminds her that her husband actually takes her for granted and she goes to the ballroom to get away from all that.
Just like Val in the first play, Anna has chosen to follow societal conventions, desensitize herself from her husband, and apparently even from that which obviously gives her boundless joy. It could be the ultimate tragedy when we are caught in an endless cycle of dedma even when what really matters is already staring us in the face.
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Dedma is showing until April 13 at the Mirror Studio Theater, Kalayaan Ave., Makati. Tickets at teeq.live.
