‘The Art of Breaking Up’ runs until December 6 at the PETA Theater Center, Quezon City.
Given how often breakups become the subject of stories and songs, it may be easy to downplay just how devastating they are to the people going through them. The end of a relationship is also an instance of grief, often bringing about massive shifts in one’s life plans and perspectives—and all of the media we consume can only approximate the myriad ways people experience it.
This is what Teatro Kapamilya and PETA Plus’ The Art of Breaking Up sets out to illustrate. An update of the late George de Jesus III’s 2009 play Kung Paano Maghiwalay, the production follows various couples who are in some way connected to a senior-aged husband and wife. Through many self-contained vignettes, the show offers several compelling performances and more than its fair share of nuanced character dynamics. But it is also highly inconsistent; the whole never becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
The Art of Breaking Up is at its best when it deconstructs the nature of a breakup itself. In its first scene, longtime spouses Anita and Ben (played by Roselyn Perez and Teroy Guzman, respectively, alternating with Bibeth Orteza and Carlitos Siguion-Reyna) acknowledge that they’ve become too dependent on each other in their old age to feasibly follow through on a separation. In the next vignette, a hypothetical question posed by Carla (Yesh Burce) to Dino (Jameson Blake, alternating with Jake Cuenca) ends up in a discussion of how breakups carry their own value and meaning, depending on how they happen.
Scenes like these emphasize that relationships are also a set of material arrangements and social expectations to be managed, but these insights soon become repetitive. Additionally, the fact that these characters are friends—with each person being someone else’s ex—seems like it should lead to a greater exploration of the trust between them. But the characters never really come across as a group whose bonds have been made stronger by heartbreak. And while act two attempts to show the purity of each couple’s first meeting, the potential romance of these scenes can’t help but appear weightless in comparison to act one.
Nikki Valdez as Lou
Director Dudz Teraña does well to keep things legible on Julio Garcia’s 360-degree stage. With Ian Torqueza’s lighting—directing where the audience’s focus should go—Teraña keeps scenes straight to the point and never crowds the stage as his actors move in and out during transitions. Spare props are either lowered from the ceiling or picked up by the actors from among the piles of discarded items bordering the set. These create simple but potent images that function as shorthand for the struggles of each relationship: a wheelchair, a Jenga set, maleta, and other ordinary objects now charged with emotion.
With that said, The Art of Breaking Up fluctuates wildly in terms of tone. There’s an inconsistency to how the production integrates comedy or music in its storytelling, frequently cheapening the intended seriousness of certain vignettes. This can be seen in how Kolette Madelo and Benedix Ramos (alternating with Sheena Belarmino and Jarren Garcia) repeatedly enter between scenes to sing Star Music ballads. There’s potential here to emphasize how these unique breakup experiences echo in popular music across generations. But these musical breaks are often just distracting, flattening emotions into songs that only vaguely have to do with what was just expressed on stage.
The ensemble also tends to exhibit this same inconsistency. Some of the actors are more convincing in depicting the subtle differences of their characters’ personalities from one relationship to another. Others aren’t as successful in making the ordinary feel lived-in and authentic—there’s still a sense of self-consciousness that makes their interactions ring artificial. Meanwhile, the “everyman” character who stumbles into many of these scenes to provide comic relief (in different outfits, hairstyles, and voices), Meann Espinosa is either incredibly funny or ends up pulling scenes too far from the point they’re making.
Yesh Burce as Carla, Brent Manalo as Jake, and other cast members
But when the performances in The Art of Breaking Up work, they evoke full character histories. The exhaustion that Nikki Valdez’s Lou (alternating with Janella Salvador) portrays during her breakup makes one feel the frustration of having the same argument over and over. Brent Manalo’s Jake (alternating with AJ Sison) stays entirely subdued, the smallness of his expressions magnifying his heartbreak. And Yesh Burce’s seemingly superficial Carla always roots her giddiness and humor in a dignified place. The play may not regularly offer complex characterization like this, but perhaps this is the point: because we can never truly comprehend the human condition, then all the more does each person deserve patience and understanding.
‘The Art of Breaking Up’ runs until December 6 at the PETA Theater Center, Quezon City. Tickets are available through TicketWorld.
