VILLAGE VOICE
September 1, 1998 Issue
Reviewed by Francine Russo

Veiled women chant, candles flicker, and whips whistle. The Filipino father, reenacting the Crucifixion, extends his arms on the cross and curses his departing son, who drives nails into his father's hands. PeregiNasyon (Theatre Row Theatre) plays as a fever dream cut by biting irony and leavened by boisterous peasant humor. It is a journey into the Filipino-American experience, performed in English but spiked with Ilokano dialect, mystic rituals, and dazzling displays of kali-escrima, the martial art of fighting with bare hands and sticks.

Writer-director Chris Millado's play means "wandering nation." Set in the 1930s, when the U.S. occupied the Philippines, it unfolds both the native and emigrant experiences through the tales of two brothers. Simeon, who has left the islands to pick asparagus in California, falls in love with a white woman and is caught up in a race riot. Esteban, oppressed by the American occupation at home, joins a band of guerrillas.

Millado stages episodes from their tempestuous lives side by side, weaving them together in a surreal fusion. The director has a gift for the boldly pictorial - for example, juxtaposing the immigrant swell's revelry at as West Coast swing club, with the spare, stylized guerilla battles.

Orlando Pabotoy is a charismatic Simeon, both steely and frolicsome, and Ariel Estrada projects a baffled innocence as his trapped younger brother. They are supported by spirited cast of 11 that convincingly peoples the stage with arrogant colonials, racist ranters, heroic fighters, and low-comedy swaggerers. Anything but subtle, PeregriNasyon blazes out as a tropical, turbulent theatrical mosaic.

VOICE LISTING

A fever dream of a play. Chris Millado's work is cut by biting irony and simple peasant humor, an exotic journey into the Filipino-American experience. Set in the '30s during the American occupation of the Philippines, it tells the tales of two brothers, one an emigrant in California, the other a guerrilla at home. Millado stages their tempestuous episodes side by side, weaving them together in a surreal fusion. Intensely acted, never subtle, it blazes out as a turbulent theatrical mosaic.

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