Here Lies Love Broadway Reviews

In any case, on Broadway, it’s not until the gorgeous last song, “God Draws Straight,” that the material matches the movement in a way that reaches the balcony. Led by Moses Villarama, and based on comments by eyewitnesses to the peaceful 1986 revolution, it acknowledges the moral superiority of its real heroes — the Philippine people — in the only way a musical can: by giving it beautiful voice. Finally, it’s OK to applaud.

Still, even if “Here Lies Love” doesn’t reach the emotional highs of “Evita” (one reason it can’t is that, unlike Eva Peron, Marcos is alive and well and with a son, Bongbong, who’s the current president of the Philippines), it’s a ravishing sensory experience unlike any other. You'll walk out at the end with no changed opinion of Imelda Marcos, but instead with your eyes opened about the endless possibilities for Broadway theaters.

The ingenuity that Bryne demonstrated in “American Utopia,” an astute compilation of existing hits into a treatise on democracy, is unevenly expressed here. Though their dynamic musicianship is undeniable, it’s hardly clear what the creators make of the Marcos’ fraught legacy. According to the script, many of the show’s lyrics are drawn from its historical figures' public remarks. But the Marcos’ words have been artfully assembled here without a coherent or critical point of view about their politics or public personas. The pair’s duplicity and alleged wrongdoings are distilled into mere headlines, in projection design by Peter Nigrini.

The irresistible score is similarly like nothing else on Broadway, to use an exhausted phrase that is in this case the simple truth. Mr. Byrne has always been a musical magpie, and here he proffers a dizzyingly eclectic range of songs. There is melodic balladry for the numbers that explore Imelda’s rise from poverty on a provincial island in the Philippines to her fairy-tale marriage to a political up-and-comer. Once Imelda, played with radiant seductiveness by Arielle Jacobs, and her husband, Ferdinand (Jose Llana, exuding cool ambition), have secured the presidency and become beloved public figures, the party proper begins, with powerful basslines surging forth and the audience encouraged to join in the happy melee, even to the point of being given choreographic instructions.

I was glad I chose a spot on the floor. Things do get a bit crowded, although nowhere near as claustrophobic as the original downtown version of the show in 2013. Fatboy Slim’s jolting tunes, melodic and insistent, send scintillating vibrations through your nervous system; you can’t help but plug into the production’s current. Since the show is more party than parable, the management might want to consider a few more minutes of music after the curtain calls. Because “Here Lies Love” is the kind of stimulant that makes you believe you could dance all night.

So how can a tale so depressing in description make for what will surely become one of the most popular nights on the town for New Yorkers and tourists alike It starts with the music. Byrne and Slim (and Tom Gandey and J Pardo) have concocted some terrific blends here. There’s the pulsating American dance club music that so enthralled Filipino nightlifers, there’s a heavy dose of Filipino folk music tradition, some fairly straightforward American show tunes and – listen carefully – a dash here and there of Talking Heads-era Byrne. It all combines into a winning soundscape. But the real pull of Here Lies Love is the staging, with a malleable performance space, an audience herded to and fro, and cast members finding perches throughout the venue. In Here Lies Love, a D.J./Emcee provides narrative segues, musical set-ups, dance instructions and how-tos for the dance-floor audience members guided here and there by pink-suited ushers holding large glow-stick-style batons.

The three words of the title were Imelda’s humble choice of verbiage for her own tombstone. David Korins’s scenic design for “Here Lies Love” on Broadway is far more expansive than the bare-bones production at the Public, and it is immensely enhanced by Peter Nigrini’s jazzy projection designs of vintage photos, documentaries and animated graphics that literally engulf the theater.

This show has been around for several years but is only now making it to Broadway, and it has a couple of formidable assets. One is the Byrne-and-Slim soundscape, which is to my mind more beautiful, more exciting and more surprising than any score on Broadway last season, even to those who have listened to the album for years. I hear Byrne’s Scottish folkloric tradition in the melodies, but that actually increases its poignancy, given how it melds with Slim’s beats. I suppose some will argue it’s not an original score but akin to Green Day’s “American Idiot,” but no one will care. The music is gorgeous. Especially in the last half hour. The second strength is director Alex Timbers’ conceptual staging. It’s hard to mess with these old Broadway palaces and yet Timbers and his design team (the set is by David Korins, projections are by Peter Negrini and lights are by Justin Townsend) have transformed the creaking quotidian auditorium with platforms and runways aplenty. You can sit and observe the show all around you or you can pay to hit the orchestra floor and party with the Marcoses. Whee!

The groundbreaking, floor-shaking Here Lies Love makes space for itself like no Broadway show ever has. David Byrne’s concept musical about the rise and fall of the former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos was a hit in its 2013 run at the Public Theatre, but those who saw that immersive production may have wondered how it could possibly translate to a traditional proscenium theater. The trick, it turns out, was to remake the venue instead of the show: Director Alex Timbers and set designer David Korins have revolutionized and radicalized the capacious Broadway Theatre into a gleaming dance club, walled by dozens of video screens, where audience members—often literally standing in the middle of the action-get swept up in the shifting tides and undertows of history.

That’s achievement enough, but Here Lies Love does more. Byrne and Slim (with additional music by Thomas Gandey and José Luis Pardo) use disco-pop to tell the fraught history of former Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos from childhood to exile. The show relies more on the vibes of each song than expository dialogue and lyrics. Projected text identifies characters and events, distilling the rise and fall of the Marcos regime into bullet points that sometimes feel like skimming a Wikipedia article – but the score and performances expand on the general mood enough to flesh out the events.

The 90-minute musical is about the rise and implosion of the Marcos regime in the Philippines, and given the scale and brutality of their crimes against an entire country, the musical sings and dances up a storm, while not making much of a case there is much to sing and dance about. There is a lot of concept and dazzle in Here Lies Love, but not much consideration given to what it’s all for.

With its reliance on catchy beats to liven up history, there are echoes of Hamilton as well as Six, the Broadway hit about Henry VIII’s wives that culminates in a long-awaited rise-from-your-seats dance party. But Here Lies Love, which melds dirty dancing with dirty politics, rouses audience members from the jump.

What makes a larger impact, though, is a giddy sense of movement: the show’s director, Alex Timbers, and its superb choreographer, Annie-B Parson, whisk the performers across the space’s moving platforms, and even up into catwalks along the balcony, sometimes just to instruct the audience when and how to boogie. Justin Townsend’s wall-of-color lights, David Korins’s mammoth night-club set, and Clint Ramos’s vivid costumes create a setting that both sends up the real Imelda’s passion for Studio 54 glitz and aims to have its own hedonistic fun. (The show’s unlikely mix of morality play and G-rated rave felt less freighted, at the Public, before 2022 and the ascent of Imelda’s son, Bongbong Marcos, to the Presidency of the Philippines.)

The result is that you may well feel more personally involved in the historical proceedings than you did if you attended, say, “Hamilton,” or even earlier efforts by Mr. Timbers such as the stirring “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” or “Joan of Arc: Into the Fire,” for which Mr. Byrne wrote the book, music, and lyrics. (Mr. Byrne is the sole lyricist for “Love” as well; Tom Gandey and José Luis Pardo are credited with additional music.)

Thanks in part to their hard work, Here Lies Love is a great, unsettling time. The show originates with David Byrne, who conceived an album built around Imelda’s story with lyrics largely excerpted from her and other political figures’ interviews and speeches, laid juicy get-on-your-feet hooks devised in collaboration with Fatboy Slim. The resulting music is irresistible to a totalitarian degree. The title song references the phrase Imelda (still alive at 94) has said she wanted on her gravestone, and starts out with her diaphanous platitudes about her humble upbringings before it hits a chorus that hints at her megalomaniacal ambitions and practically begs everyone to sing along. The point, as elsewhere in the show, is to get the audience grooving with the synthy messaging of dictatorship, with enough moral dissonance to make your stomach churn as your feet keep moving—a that’s how they get you parable.

Despite Imelda’s glossy facade, Here Lies Love does not rest on its surfaces. Though, with Alex Timbers’ immersive, dynamic direction, Annie-B Parson’s kinetic choreography, Clint Ramos’ specific, dance-ready costumes, and Justin Townsend’s lighting, it easily could. But Byrne’s concept, impeccably executed through his lyrics, and the music he co-wrote with Fatboy Slim, is a digestible, hip-shaking challenge. With most of its lyrics lifted directly from actual words spoken by its subjects, it asks us to keep a critical eye, even as we’re bombarded with feel-good slogans and unchecked vanities, made doubly dangerous by the Studio 54 beats underneath. It asks us to embody the ambition, mendacity, and ruthlessness we carry with us, even when we think we’ve danced them off, and question our complicity. After the non-stop party, the show’s sobering end reminds us that dancing can be as inattentive as it is cathartic.

High among the joys of the evening is the work of the highly talented, ever-present, and perpetually propelled cast. The piece—like Evita—is devised around three principal roles, and there are three dynamic players on view. Jose Llana has been giving standout performances since he first appeared in 1996 as a teen-aged Lun Tha in the Donna Murphy King and I; among the numerous highlights of his career were Chip Tolentino, the candy-selling contestant in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and a replacement stint as the King in the 2015 Lincoln Center King and I. As convincing as his Marcos was ten years ago at the Public, Llana’s performance is now even more compelling. Conrad Ricamora—who followed Here Lies Love by playing Lun Tha in that Lincoln Center King and I—also brings added resonance to his performance as political contender Ninoy Aquino.

That’s both a compliment and a critique, as Alex Timbers’ multimedia treatment is so heavy on spectacle it makes “Moulin Rouge” (another Timbers production) seem simple by comparison. As a result, the 90-minute show is consistently great for the eye, but its considerable substance, conveyed through an infectious pop-meets-disco score by David Byrne, is too often overwhelmed or obliterated by the design elements.

Tony Award-winning Alex Timbers, a visual master who made a glitzy carnival out of Moulin Rouge!, has been the director of this project since day one, and he’s amped up the theatrics to match the venue. The old intimacy is diminished, and the show starts to seem a bit relentless, especially since not all the music is on a top tier—but you can still feel the multi-layered invention on parade, and it’s often breathtaking. As an example of the intricacy involved, when a helicopter takes off (conveyed through sound and lights), I felt a gust of wind wafting into the mezzanine, and it wasn’t my imagination.

The show's real star is the glitzy, all-encompassing set by David Korins. As the action unfolds, stage platforms shift, audience members shuffle, and video projections display live-action crowd shots and historical documents on large screens throughout the auditorium. A giant disco ball spins, reflecting light across the space. Annie-B Parson’s electrifying choreography, which includes a Filipino line dance with the audience, furthers the nightclub scene. Audience members whose knowledge of Imelda Marcos is limited to the fact that she owned 3,000 pairs of shoes will only leave with a partial understanding of this violent period. The musical has no book, and the punchy songs paint broad strokes of the 60-year history. (The program, given to the stage floor patrons upon exiting the theatre, includes an insert with a more detailed historical timeline that fills in the show’s gaps.) Still, this rollicking, form-breaking musical party is well worth an RSVP.