LOS ANGELES — From his clever and wise writing in last year’s The Bottoming Process, I could tell Nicholas Pilapil would be one playwright to watch.
He returns with this season’s opening presentation at the downtown Los Angeles Theatre Center, the Latino Theater Company’s world premiere co-production with Artists at Play of God Will Do the Rest. It’s the second collaboration between the two companies: A year ago we checked out This Is Not a True Story, which examined stereotypes of Asian characters.
Latino and Filipino cultures share a lot of DNA: Both are products, in part, of Spanish colonization. The Spanish language, which was the official language under Spanish rule over the Filipinas, became an official language for a period, and is now an auxiliary or “optional and voluntary language.” Tagalog is the widely spoken language in the Philippines, but many Filipinos also speak other regional languages. Many Spanish words have entered the language, like the name of one of the country’s national culinary specialties, chicken adobo, as well as terms from the Roman Catholic religion which remains strong. A recurring point plot in this fresh new comedy-drama is the figurine of the Santo Niño (the Holy Child) in the living room, to whom prayers are offered on any suitable occasion.
As I watched God Will Do the Rest my mind kept tugging at me: Have I seen this play before? No, surely not, it’s a world premiere! But in the way it recapitulates, in its own voice, place and time, many of the ageless tropes of the immigrant family experience, it could have been a loose adaptation of a Yiddish play on Second Avenue a century ago, or any number of plays about the Mexican-American experience the Latino Theatre Company has offered over the years.
“Nicholas is writing about the Filipino American experience, but the underlying relationships parallel the experience of most immigrant families,” says Artists at Play producing artistic leader Stefanie Lau. “It’s about following the American Dream, and what some parents may have sacrificed to achieve that for their kids. It’s about the complexities of family and the joy that comes along with the hurt. Many audience members, regardless of their background, might recognize their own families on the stage.”
Strong, opinionated and glamorous, the family matriarch Maggie (Rinabeth Apostol) is celebrating a milestone birthday, and the de Dios family has gathered to celebrate in true “FilAm” style. The family name itself, “of God,” suggests that whatever their differences and disagreements, their resentments and weaknesses, hey, they are all children of God, right? We meet her longtime husband Ferdie (Reggie Lee), stubbornly patriarchal, with whom there is still a burning affection. Their eldest daughter, a former teen mom, now divorced and the black sheep of the family, Connie (Ellen D. Williams), in her early 40s and living at home, has a son, Tanner (Ryan Nebreja), who is about to leave for the East Coast to enroll in the Culinary Institute of America (the other C.I.A.) with aspirations of taking his abuela’s handed-down recipes and adapting them to a fusion Filipino taste. The younger daughter Fritzie (Josette Canilao) is a highly successful real estate agent whose income goes a long way toward supporting the household, with her observant Jewish fiancé, Nate (Josh Odsess–Rubin), adopted as “the family white” who tries his best at a few words of Tagalog. Finally, there’s Maggie’s fabulously acerbic sister Babette (Jason Rogel), whose cutting presence (another glass of wine, please) assures us that the fault lines of jealousy and competition go back at least a whole generation in this family.
Fritzie and Nate plan to be married at his family’s temple—and she plans to convert to Judaism. The temple is appropriately named Temple Bat Yam, meaning “daughter of the sea.” Perhaps like so many immigrants, Jews, Filipinos and others, it’s meant to signify the new life on a new continent.
“Each of the characters has to navigate balancing their lives with love and duty to family,” says Pilapil. “Like most immigrants, Filipinos come to this country looking for a better life — but sometimes they have other, unspoken reasons. It’s not part of our culture to talk openly about things. I wanted to paint a picture of what life could be like if a family threw everything on the table, no holds barred.”
And does he ever throw it! Overriding the acid hilarity is a profound understanding of the interrelated connections among the members of this multigenerational household. We laugh at their antics, because in our hearts we all know people like this. The secrets in this one-act full-evening play slowly leak out, lending at each stage new understanding of where each character is coming from in their life journey. These characters are directed, on a very busy stage and to split-second responses, by Fran de Leon.
Expect to see generational conflict, issues of language fluency, lack of communication, open gayness, sibling rivalry, family dysfunction, arguments over money, joblessness, success, class differences, illness, religious belief and practice, clashing TV-watching preferences, busted illusions, a colorful past left behind, karaoke, babies out of marriage, and more. There’s hardly a sacrosanct topic Pilapil keeps his distance from—and we wouldn’t want him to.
As idiosyncratic as each of these characters is, what does seem to elude them is a visible sense of connectivity to Filipino communal organizations. Even the church services they “attend” are all online. Ferdie, however, as a hospital nurse—he’d been a doctor in his homeland—has seen a whole tranche of Filipino patients dying in a Covid holocaust as he faithfully reported to work all through the pandemic. It comes out that he left the Filipinas, searching for a better life, after dictator Ferdinand Marcos took over—while his wife Maggie, enjoying her career, stayed on. “We can only do our best,” she says, “and hope God will do the rest.”
The set itself is practically a character in the play, a much lived-in environment with a number of playing areas—front door, living room, stairway up to the bedrooms, a little shrine, breakfast table (typically piled with stuff and virtually unusable), a full kitchen and Alexa. Oh, and Christian crosses on almost every available wall. When the family all gather ’round for the birthday dinner, the scene consciously recalls the Last Supper.
God Will Do the Rest was developed and workshopped at the Geffen Playhouse. It was a finalist for a 2023 New Harmony Project residency, and a Dramatists Guild Foundation semi-finalist for a nationwide virtual fellowship. On opening night (Aug. 31) the house was full, mostly with young people (what a concept!) that LATC attracts with its contemporary programming and reasonable ticket prices. Whatever your ethnic background may be, see Nicholas Pilapil’s play and you should feel right at home.
The creative team for God Will Do the Rest includes scenic designer Leah Ramillano; lighting designer Omar Madkour; sound designer Jesse Mandapat; costume designers Janel “JJ” Javier and C. Yuri Son; props designer Rye Mandel; and dramaturg Andy Knight. Katherine Chou is associate director. The stage manager is Brandon Cheng.
God Will Do the Rest plays on Thurs., Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 4 p.m. through September 29. Tickets range from $10–$38. The Los Angeles Theatre Center is located at 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles 90013. Parking is available for $8 with box office validation at Los Angeles Garage Associate Parking structure, 545 S. Main St. (between 5th and 6th Streets, just behind the theater). Or take the Metro: nearest stop is Pershing Square (two blocks west of The LATC).
For more information and tickets, call (213) 489-0994 or go to the company website. The trailer can be viewed here. Click here to listen to the interview with playwright Nicholas Pilapil and actor Jason Rogel on “The Out Agenda” podcast at KPFK 90.7 FM. Click here to watch the interview with actor Reggie Lee on The Actor’s Choice. Click here to read the interview with director Fran de Leon in the Philippine Inquirer.
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