Playing to a sold-out theater crowd, the Bay Area production of the “The Romance of Magno Rubio” was well received and with standing ovation. The play, directed by Loy Arcenas from a play by Lonnie Carter, is adapted from  Carlos Bulosan’s short story of the same title. Bulosan, as many students of the Filipino-American experience in the U.S. will know, was known for his depiction of Filipino field labor in the 30’s that he wrote into his short stories and in his semi-biographical work America is in the Heart. The Romance of Magno Rubio (RMR) does not have the heavy pall of labor exploitation that characterizes much of Bulosan’s writing. Lonnie Carter’s treatment suffuses the play with comic relief throughout and the subtext of exploitation, loneliness, treachery, and disappointment is hidden behind this curtain of humor.

This layering of humor operates on two levels – one is that it plays on the linguistic familiarity of the audience with Tagalog terms and references. Specially effective were references to sexual parts. In what might be constsrued as classic, Filipino slapstick humor,  Magno and Claro duel each other with tokens bestowed by Clarabelle, the woman of Magno’s desire. The humor progressively descends from photographs to pubic hair. This is easily picked up by a Philippine-born audience who, based on the quick reaction to certain words (and actions), were plentiful in audience. The other operates at the level of irony. This requires a certain familiarity with the condition of Filipino laborers during that period of history.

The play begins within a very sparse setting of a bunkhouse, with a harmonica playing “Home on the Range”. Those familiar with the Americanization of Filipino school children during the American occupation of the Philippines will feel the immediate discordance between dreams (prairie home) and reality (bahay kubo). Americanized schooling (which later critics identified as mis-education) promoted American culture at every instance. American folksongs were bundled with translated Filipino folksongs, creating an effective yet false cultural homogeneity. The imagery of this songs became embedded in the national psyche of the Filipinos, especially among those who belonged to the pre-war/post-war generation, Bulosan’s generation in other words. The idyllic home on the range was in reality a bunkhouse in the harsh asparagus fields of California. To this generation (and to many still in the Philippines), America remained the country El Dorado, the gold country where dreams can be fulfilled. Lured by false promises of labor recruiters, the Filipinos quickly became disillusioned by a country that did not live up to its promise of equality and opportunity. Instead of the good life that magazines, newpapers and movies promoted, life became an endless cycle of stoop labor from one crop to another. For Magno Rubio, a short, illiterate and quixotic simple man, the El Dorado of his dreams was to marry a white woman, this Clarabelle,  who he found in a magazine lonely hearts ad and who he corresponded with using a love-letter hack who charged exorbitant rates per word. In this calculus of work per word, the futility of Magno’s romance became ridiculously painful – for each vegetable he picks, he can afford to buy a word which makes the economics of a love-letter not only expensive but humanly impossible, a feat that his bunkhouse mates derided him with. Regardless, Magno Rubio kept writing, ultimately proposed and was accepted. At this point the audience have became painfully aware that Clarabelle was a gold-digger who thought Magno was a prosperous Latino who can western union her funds for her and her family’s needs.  This level of deception is ingeniously conveyed by having an actor (Atoy – Ramon de Ocampo) impersonate Clarabelle reading her letter in full view of the audience and  with an Arkansas drawl. This deception device is continued when Clarabelle comes to California to meet Magno Rubio. Instead of a “live” actress on front stage, the image of Clarabelle is presented to the audience as a silouette, like a shadow play, thereby heightening her illusory nature. Magno, of course, could hardly control his ecstasy. The woman of his dreams came to marry him.  His bunkmates give him money so he take his girl to New Mexico, one of the few states that allowed miscegenation. The final disillusion strikes hard and deep, as he tries to collect his girl (well -groomed and with an unmistakable swagger), he discovers that Clarabelle runs off with another man. At this point, there is a palpable gasp of dismay from the audience. The denouement was executed well. Magno sinks into depression, one that makes him quick to pull a knife. The suggestion of amok was fleeting but effective. Filipinos during that time had a notorious reputation with switch blades. Placated by the elderly Prudencio, Magno and the laborers return to their home in the range that is at once lonely, illusory, sad, filled with frustrated manhood and yet hopeful with dreams of gold.

The performance has a few remarkable moments – choreography, if you will. The harvesting scene using sticks for asparagus knives was novel, mimicking movements of eskrima, a stick fighting style popular among Filipinos. Ordinarily an elegant and graceful style of combat, its application to labor work is particularly violent, as if the laborers were in fact in combat with their labor. The much touted balagtasan – a 19th century form of oral combat – that the play appropriates for some of its dialogues, did not come out as recognizable. Seated at mid-theater, the acoustics were horrible, the words became lost and muddied by the echo of stomping sticks and percussion. In its original setting, Balatagsan (named after Francisco Balagtas), is both a witty and mellifluous verbal joust, full of metaphors and hidden linguistic innuendoes so suited to Tagalog’s ambiguities. I would love to hear a recording of the play in entirety recorded under studio conditions. Other than these minor quibbles, “The Romance of Magno Rubio” brings into contempory American theater, an entertaining slice of labor history without the heaviness of polemics and overwrought ideology. Go see it.