School and Elijah Wood: Today was the first day of the second term. Nothing happened, unless you count meeting my creepy-looking (and Mad Scientist lookalike) teacher. Elijah says farewell to Frodo. Ookay. Just had to post it because I rarely read news on Elijah Wood. Come to think of it, there’s hardly news on him since Lord of the Rings. Moving on..

Footloose: Yesterday, we watched the local production of the musical Footloose at the Meralco Theater. At first I admit that I didn’t even want to watch it because I assumed that casting two celebrity leads, JayR (Ren) and Iya Villania (Ariel), with much masa appeal yet little theatre experience would be the downfall of this production. As usual, I was wrong. They were actually two of the *many* scene stealers in the entire show. And it was not because they were more popular and more well known, so to speak, than the other theatre actors. It was the first time that I got to watch two local celebrities much admired by the jologs/masa (I’m so mean) who lived up to the hype of their popularity.

And that includes Nikki Valdez as Wendy Jo. She’s still playing the role of a loud, funny sidekick best friend, but not in her usual burara way. She was sooo cute and her voice was also surprisingly good. Of course, the rest of the cast was pretty good including Giancarlo Magdangal, Caisa Borromeo and Agot Isidro. Oh yeah, and it was also fun snickering and giggling to JayR’s typical dance moves and the either deliberate or unintentional reference to his Sun Cellular tv commercial. How he danced on the Sun Cellular commercial was also how he danced in Footloose. He even rapped at some point, ahahahahahahahaa. But I swear never to think of JayR as jologs… for now. He’s actually really good in singing and in dancing, waaay above my expectations.

All in all, the musical was good. It’s fun and energetic and interesting, since I’ve never watched the Kevin Bacon movie. The storyline had a light dose of Christian morality lessons, which I think is one of Trumpets‘ influence on its sister company, Stages. But it was a somewhat nice touch to the story.

Bottomline, you should catch Footloose next weekend or before September ends. And though I still think that last year’s Cabaret (NVC) was more fun (partly biased because I’m really a fan of Cabaret) and the storyline of Footloose is pretty blah, the talented actors and the songs in this amazing show was definitely worth it.

This entry was posted at KISLAPMATA on on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.