The world has changed since “Here Lies Love,” the immersive disco musical about Imelda Marcos, premiered at the Public Theater in 2013. It returns on Broadway this month with a sharper message—and, for its all-Filipino cast, far higher stakes. Learn more:
Photo: Billy Bustamante, Matthew Murphy, and Evan ZimmermanDavid Byrne was on the verge of giving up. “Let’s just license it to regional theaters and high schools and see what they do with it.” Actor Conrad Ricamora? “Oh, yeah, I gave up hope. After we did it twice at the Public, and after Seattle, there wouldn’t even be, an immersive, sung-through disco musical about Imelda Marcos, former first lady of the Philippines and, as of last year, mother of its current president.
After the pandemic decimated New York’s live-entertainment industry, however, theater owners were eager to get their audiences back. “Here was a show they remembered as working, and already looking for a place,” says Byrne, who wrote the show’s lyrics and music . “It’s ready to go.” So this summerarrives not only on Broadway but at the 1,700-seat Broadway Theatre, one of its largest.
Like power, with greater visibility comes greater responsibility. As the production inched towards Broadway’s wider audiences, criticisms that its upbeat club anthems glamorized the Marcoses’ regime escalated, especially from Filipinos.
“This is not a superhero movie,” says Byrne. “You don’t want your villain to be completely evil right from the start, and the audience, in our case, stands for the Filipino people who were seduced by the Marcoses before, little by little, things turned to the dark side.
“The trap,” Llana echoes, “is that a lot of people, knowing what the Marcoses did, hold them up as villains. But at the same time, you can’t release yourself from history. On the surface, it sounds like we’re a musical that’s glorifying the Marcoses, so there’s been a lot of pushback from Filipinos and journalists I respect who say it doesn’t look like something they want to see.
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