NOTEBOOK: Ma-Anne Dionisio’s art and emotion

NOTEBOOK: Ma-Anne Dionisio’s art and emotion

WHEN Ma-Anne Dionisio sang at the Unity Concert fundraiser last December in Toronto, some people in the audience commented about her emotional performance that distinguished her from all the other performers.

She sang “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” and a Tagalog song about unrequited love. After those two numbers, I felt that the rest of the show was anti-climax. The audience for sure felt the emotions that built up as she gave life and feeling to the songs.

When the announcement came that “Miss Saigon” was again coming to Toronto, my excitement was not about watching a drama musical that starred another Filipino in north America. My thinking was, if she was able to move the audience, with two songs, to feel in their hearts the meaning and the message and the full emotional range of the songs, imagine watching her as a star in a full musical drama like “Miss Saigon”. It would be no less than a wonderful enriching experience.

Watching “Miss Saigon” at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, you cannot deny that Ma-Anne’s sweet but powerful voice had the dominating presence throughout the show.

When she sang, especially in some instances when she stood up and faced the audience, her voice filled the theatre and you could feel the collective breathlessness in the audience.

There was of course the superb performance of Kevin Gray as The Engineer whose antics and skillfull dancing entertained the audience no end. He could sing and dance to provide the light touch in serious themes of war, love and poverty and make the audience somehow like him for that. But his anti-social entrepreneurship and schemes to use others so he could realize his American dream kept him at bay from the audience’s sympathies.

Aaron Ramey as Chris, the American soldier and lover of Kim (Ma-Anne), did very well portraying a young American soul lost in an occupational American imperialist war in backward Asia. With his bulk and height, a fuller, deeper voice could have delivered a more powerful performance.

Devin Ilaw as Thuy, the Vietnamese komissar, though with a less lengthy presence onstage, had more impact with a solid voice and a threatening military demeanor.

Becca Ayers as Ellen, wife of Chris the soldier, had a soaring voice that betrayed a veteran’s experience as a stage singer. With her singing and acting, she delivered the emotions that consumed a troubled woman who feared she would lose a spouse after a face-to-face encounter with Kim.

Josh Tower as John, the soldier buddy of Chris, had a full voice that had its most endearing moment when he sang about the children of war left behind by their American fathers. (“We owe them their fathers… They are our children too.”)

The show was a moving experience. It tells about an extraordinary love story in a society ravaged by war. Although it did not go into the whys and wherefores of war and the countless deaths and sufferings it inevitably inflicted on people, it told of the impact war could have on personal lives. The poverty, the hunger, the flesh trade, etc. were there in the background while the love story unfolded. The people’s desperate desire to escape from a war-torn society and from poverty was there.

But the whole story could not have been told as effectively and as intensely without the almost-diminutive Kim in the person of Ma-Anne Dionisio, whose fragile constitution did not help to explain the full voice that emanated from her young frame. But more than the voice, it was the emotion in her face and body language, in her tone when she spoke and sang, in her glistening sad eyes during tragic moments, that gave full weight to a compelling love story. (Think “Romeo and Juliet” and “West Side Story” set in a war situation.)

In a collective interview with Ma-Anne conducted in a backstage room on opening day of July 13, I asked her to what can she attribute her ability to put so much emotion to her singing and performance onstage, citing her Unity Concert numbers and pre-opening shows.

She said she considers herself a medium and not a source of feelings. She looks at it as something spiritual. What comes out of her in song and performance is a result of her relationship with others onstage and in the audience. She said it’s a bit different every time. And, she added, that’s the only way she could explain it.

Ma-Anne, now 36, a single mom with three children, for sure must have had rich emotional life experiences since when she was 19 when she first landed the role of Kim 17 years ago. But it’s the artist in her that brings out the emotions and it’s her voice and singing talent that bring shape and form to a stunning performance. Don’t miss the show. It will enrich your life.