Romancing Imelda
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Arielle Jacobs (Imelda Marcos – center) and the cast of Here Lies Love. Photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman (2023).
The controversial new Philippine Tourism brand generated one helpful suggestion that it should have read: “Love, the Philippines,” thus avoiding many a headache for the current Tourism Secretary. How can one quarrel with a salutation as opposed to a ridiculous command?
In the same way, “Here Lies Love,” could also have been entitled, “Here, Lies Love,” meaning love can also prevaricate. Does the now 94-year-old Imelda really mean this to be the epitaph on her grave? Only she can tell, but that seems to be the moral of the disco-techno pop play newly opened on Broadway, in no less than the theatre where “Miss Saigon” with Ms. Lea Salonga (co-producer of “Here Lies Love”) saw the light of day in the US.
Lea Salonga (Aurora Aquino) and the cast of Here Lies Love. Photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman (2023).
The David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical, rebirthed ten years after its first showing, spans nearly four decades of Imelda Romualdez-Marcos’ ascent from impoverished shoe-less country girl in 1949 to the nation’s most powerful woman as the spouse of dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, and finally, to the ignominious expulsion of the Marcoses from Malacañang Palace in 1986. A subplot of her pop biography is her turning her back on a nanny, Estrella Cumpas, who had nurtured her in her poorer days and whom she promised to repay one day. Imelda and Estrella sing “Here Lies Love” as a pledge of their mutual loyalty at the beginning.
Arielle Jacobs (Imelda Marcos). Photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman (2023).
Some liberties are taken in the retelling of this tale, such as the factoid crucial in the play to weave its characters together: Ninoy Aquino was never the boyfriend of Imelda (he emerges early in the play in a duet with Imelda and ensemble in “Child of the Philippines” and “Opposite Attraction”) although he may have escorted her on an occasion or two. Neither was she taller than him, although the play cites this as the reason for his not marrying her. It was Ferdinand Marcos who carefully measured her height when he met her, to be sure that she was not taller than him, a liability for a political figure. But the necessity of tying Ferdie, Imelda and Ninoy necessitated such conflations and conceits.
With Ferdie as tutor, Imelda was a quick study. As told by Carmen Navarro Pedrosa in The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos, part of her allure for Ferdinand was her Romualdez name, although she was considered a poor relation and treated little better than a domestic by her relatives. Her first jobs in Manila were as a piano demonstrator in an Escolta shop and a gofer in the Central Bank. Losing in the prestigious Miss Manila contest, she persuaded Mayor Arsenio Lacson of Manila, by fair means or foul, to award her a parallel title to the legitimate winner’s. Society raised its eyebrows at the fact that Imelda was so quick to marry Marcos after a mere 11-day courtship. No blushing maiden, she.
In this interpretation, Marcos is portrayed as a JFK-like hunk by Jose Llana, and Imelda as an Asian Jackie wannabe by Arielle Jacobs. However, Imelda never campaigned in a knock-off pink Jackie Kennedy suit cum-pillbox, which would have alienated Filipinos. Imelda’s ubiquitous wearing of the Philippine terno in the electoral campaign earned her the monicker of Steel Butterfly and garnered the loyalty of rural voters. Jacobs’ Imelda sings “Your Star and Slave” to the crowd in the perfect formula she has discovered to entrance them. This could have been the authentic moment to introduce her famous rendition of Filipino classic “Dahil Sa Iyo,” but the musical ignores it.
Jose Llana (Ferdinand Marcos – center) and the cast of Here Lies Love. Photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman (2023).
Ninoy Aquino (dressed perpetually as the savior in immaculate white) as played by Conrad Ricamora, is the spoiler in the Marcos dream-world as he challenges Imelda (in “The Fabulous One”) on her Edifice Complex, the building of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (falsely conflated with the later constructed Film Center where workers killed in a construction accident were allegedly buried in collapsed wet concrete during its hurried production). Her retort is a seven-year imprisonment (as in the song “Seven Years”) and exile to the United States.
Conrad Ricamora (Ninoy Aquino). Photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman (2023).
To be sure, such political details may be lost on audiences today as they literally dance to the music in a theatre reconfigured as a latter-day Studio 54, right down to the rotating silver disco globe illuminating the audience and a hyperactive studio emcee prodding the crowd to trip the light fantastic. This is meant to reflect Imelda’s love for the high life and celebrity, attested to by her visits to Studio 54, prolonged stays at the Waldorf Astoria, shopping sprees at Bloomingdale’s, purchase of serious real estate and jewelry with the people’s money, as well as rubbing elbows with the rich and famous all over the world. In the meantime, children were starving and even dying in a famine on the island of Negros back home.
A clever device of “Here Lies Love” is the way the standing audience in the pit and the seated assembly above are manipulated and literally forced by the DJ and pink-clad ushers and mobile stage to stand, sit, cheer, and move—surely a commentary on how mass hysteria is produced at rallies. The play is also challenging to the actors as the main protagonists perform up-close in some scenes to the audience both on the ground as well as on the second floor.
Conrad Ricamora (Ninoy Aquino – left), Arielle Jacobs (Imelda Marcos – right), and the cast of Here Lies Love. Photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman (2023).
The play implies that Imelda’s hand was strengthened by Marcos’ dalliance in 1970 with B-actress Dovie Beams, recorded in a humiliating tape aired in private broadcasts throughout the country. Realizing her own strength as a political partner, she used this to blackmail Marcos; this was to be the basis of her appointment during martial law as Minister of Human Settlements and putative successor of the President when he fell ill of lupus. Imelda was sent by her husband as envoy to the United Nations and even negotiated with such leaders as Mao Tse Tung, Muammar Qaddafi and Fidel Castro, indeed a far cry from her days as the Rose of Tacloban.
Reality and dream-world clash as “Order 1081” results in the violence, repression and suffering during 14 years of martial law. Ninoy Aquino undertakes his ultimate trip to the Philippines (recorded in the memorable song, “Gate 37”), a scene where his wife, Corazon, and son, Noynoy, make cameo appearances.
The excess, loudness, and frivolity of the first part of the play (running for 90 minutes and uninterrupted by an intermission) are balanced by the gravity and message of its last part, marked by the airport assassination of Ninoy Aquino and the four-day, peaceful People Power uprising, which drove the Marcoses into exile in Hawaii.
The song that may one day emerge as a classic from the musical is “Just Ask the Flowers” sung by Lea Salonga as Aurora Aquino, mother of Ninoy. She remembers Ninoy as the boy who wanted to become a drummer, and who now makes the decision to expose his bloodied corpse to the Filipino masses, who finally rise up against the atrocities and excesses of the Marcoses.
Imelda’s plaint in the end, “Why Don’t You Love Me?” is almost anticlimactic as it is echoed by Estrella Cumpas and betrayed representatives of Imelda’s past all over the theatre. Ironically, she’s all dressed in white, singing while a past image of her in the same gown is flashed on screen. This contrasts with the image of the dead Ninoy crumpled and sullied on the airport runway.
A sobering note in the end is the commentary made onstage that democracy even now is threatened all over the world, and the late dictator’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has been elected president of the Philippines. The denouement is brought to a graceful close with the melody “God Lies Straight with Crooked Lines” and a reprise of “Here Lies Love.”
The strongest singing performance, somewhat predictably, is by Lea Salonga, whose star presence cannot be ignored, while the key roles of Ferdinand, Imelda and Ninoy are given a new shine, interpretation and, perhaps, undeserved glamor by young thespians Llana, Jacobs and Ricamora, respectively. Flashes of wit and bravura show in the performances of the DJ by Moses Villarama, Maria Luisa by Jasmine Forsberg and Estrella Cumpas by Melody Butiu. Choreography and lighting are strong points of the show.
Melody Butiu (Estrella Cumpas) and the cast of Here Lies Love. Photo by Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman (2023).
Filipinos might rejoice in the fact that this was an (almost) all-Filipino cast. One missed opportunity in linking the play to the homeland could have been introducing additional music by way of a Filipino tune by a musician like Filipino Canadian Chris Trinidad interpreting “Kulintang,” “Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo” or “Dahil Sa Iyo” in a new vein.
Here, indeed, love may lie—and yet tell the truth.
A career diplomat of 35 years, Ambassador Virgilio A. Reyes, Jr. served as Philippine Ambassador to South Africa (2003-2009) and Italy (2011-2014), his last posting before he retired. He has written and edited six books, including Gloria: Roman Leoncio’s Kapampangan Translation of Huseng Batute’s Poem-Novel (Center for Kapampangan Studies, 2003) given the National Book award in 2004; In the National Interest: The Philippines and the UN: Issues of Disarmament, Peace and Security, 1986-1991(NY and Manila, 1991); La Revolucion Filipina, 1896-1898, El Nacimiento de Una Idea (Santiago de Chile, 1998); Nuestro Perdido Eden: A Novella on Manila (Ateneo de Naga Press, 2019); A Memory of Time collection of essays (Quezon City, 2020); and We Remember Rex@100 (Quezon City, 2022).
More articles by Ambassador Virgilio Reyes, Jr.
