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David Byrne’s unusual musical “sets a new standard for audience participation,” said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. While plenty of shows inspire foot-tapping, this one’s sure to have you dancing “hip by pelvis” with the notorious wife of a modern dictator. Set to a disco beat in a nightclub-like space, Byrne’s so-called “poperetta” about former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos doesn’t even provide seats but instead encourages you to move to the “insidiously infectious” score created by Byrne and Fatboy Slim. As strobe lights flash and the party rages on, you’ll also be asked to vote for Imelda’s corrupt, repressive husband, Ferdinand. “And as folks tend to do when caught up in the fever of a crowd, you’ll probably find yourself smiling and nodding assent.”
“The whole thing is a little kooky,” but then so is Imelda’s story, said Peter Santilli in the Associated Press. Here, her rags-to-riches journey begins when she wins a beauty pageant at age 18 and is wooed into marrying the dictator-to-be during an 11-day courtship. Once in the presidential palace, Imelda dresses the part of a disco queen and “oozes glamour”—until crimes against the people drag her down. Ruthie Ann Miles plays her “with lovely elegance and depth,” yet—thankfully—Imelda never becomes the charismatic heroine that Argentina’s Eva Perón was made out to be in the 1978 musical Evita.
The dance beats never trivialize the Marcoses’ sins, said Jesse Green in New York magazine. “The featherweightness of disco” instead allows us to see through the positive energy surrounding Imelda so we never forget that this child-like woman “willingly bought into very bad things.” What’s really being skewered, though, is the public’s complicity in their exploitation. Imelda Marcos, in fact, isn’t dead or in exile: She’s 83 and serving in the Philippine House of Representatives. “Awful things happened and keep happening,” but everyone continues to shrug and say, “Not my problem.”