Now its 30th season, Ma-Yi Theater Company has recently presented striking premieres of the flashy musical KPOP and a smart Shakespearean riff known as Teenage Dick.
The company’s latest production, Felix Starro, bowed on Tuesday at Theatre Row. Ma-Yi says it’s the first off-Broadway musical created by Filipino Americans.
Generally sorrowful in tone, this contemporary musical ambitiously develops an adult storyline regarding faith and identity. Pleasing songs and performances can be counted among the production’s best parts, although the musical somehow does not add up into an entirely satisfying show.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★ review here.]
Drawn from a short story by Lysley Tenorio, Felix Starro concerns a same-named Filipino faith healer who visits San Francisco in 1985 to score some badly-needed bucks and restore his frayed reputation. A celebrity in the Philippines during the Marcos regime, when Felix performed psychic surgeries on his own TV show, the aging miracle worker is now broke and ailing.
Accompanying Felix on the trip is his 19 year-old orphaned grandson and assistant, Junior, who does not entirely believe in the old man’s not-so-miraculous doings. Later we learn that Junior has priorities of his own, which involve Flora Ramirez, a flower shop proprietor who operates a profitable sideline in forging identity papers for undocumented emigrants.
A psychic session for a well-to-do widow that turns out badly threatens to capsize the different dreams harbored by Felix and Junior.
Jessica Hagedorn’s otherwise solid book and trim lyrics do not thoroughly illuminate the story’s themes or the characters’ motivations. The women involved in Junior’s somewhat innocent life, one trashy, the other troubled, appear incidental to his growing conflicts of faith with Felix. The underlying issue regarding immigration and assimilation is expressed in negative terms and contributes to a downbeat resolution.
Yet Hagedorn’s script provides a number of effectively theatrical sequences, such as an urgent parade of invalids, a fervent healing session, and a glitzy flashback to Felix’s glory days on TV, all of which are magnified by Fabian Obispo’s engaging music. Tangos, other tasty songs redolent of mid-1980s pop hits, and all kinds of colorful dramatic music, resonantly arranged for a four-member band, comprise Obispo’s varied and often vivid score that floats the story along a strongly rhythmic current.
Although the tuner happens mostly around a shabby hotel room, designer Marsha Ginsberg’s poisonously green setting fluently evokes other places, thanks to ghostly projections and Oliver Wason’s intermittently spooky lighting design. Snaky, at times spasmodic, choreography by Brandon Bieber significantly contributes drama to the intermission-free proceedings, which run a tad short of two hours.
Making smart use of his fine designers, Ralph B. Peña, Ma-Yi’s producing artistic director, conjures up some mystical atmospherics and believable performances in his smooth staging of the show that begins slowly then gradually increases in urgency.
Designer Becky Bodurtha’s period-sensitive costumes aptly enables a seven-actor ensemble to depict secondary figures as well as their key characters. Alan Ariano’s sympathetic portrayal of the failing Felix Starro glows with an inner fire that radiates a sense of purity even in his seediest moments. Nacho Tambunting gives Junior a sweet voice and a sincere charm. Ching Valdes-Aran is equally elegant and steely as the florist who cultivates identities. Francisca Muñoz is painfully touching in her depiction of a debilitated believer in psychic healing.
For all of this excellence and originality, Felix Starro never becomes a compelling musical. One wonders if something vital in the story has been lost during reportedly five years of development sessions on the project. Or is it a matter of focus? Gosh, it’s a miracle how musicals ever get made.
Felix Starro opened September 3, 2019, at Theatre Row and runs through September 15. Tickets and information: ma-yitheatre.org
