Paolo Gumabao shines in gay play

A monologue if performed for more than an hour is no joke.

Or more to it, to internalize and to interpret an exposition, a character, a setting, a motivation, a conflict, a theme, a denouement, a resolution etc. in a solo act, a simultaneous, multiple-character delineation in one, in one straight performance, is no peanut.

But film and television actor Paolo Gumabao was able to tackle the rigorous and multi-dimensional persona of a man being watched and wickedly planned by another man, as in blackmail, for a fortune that would eventually destroy his soul and his showbiz career for eight thousand pesos.

​This was successfully portrayed by Paolo in Dante Balboa’s “Walong Libong Piso” that played recently at Teatrino in Greenhills.

To think that it was the first time Gumabao tackled a live atage performance.

​He was tireless.

​He was engrossed.

He was hooked to the minute detail of the narrative.

​The whole production was clean enough, seamless of stage design and other mise-en-scene, however, in the beginning, the middle and up to the near end of the play, an external.struggle wasn’t in sight.

There must have been an implicit tension but the outward opposition came as climactic.

​A study in human sexuality was also the main menu of the queer play. (Boy Villasanta)