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| MENCHU LAUCHENGCO YULO singing OMAR SHARIF, with Rody Vera beside her |
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| MENCHU with co-stars NINO ALEJANDRO, RODY VERA & MARK BAUTISTA |
MENCHU LAUCHENGCO-YULO is generally considered as the First Lady of Philippine theater because of her wide experience and impressive credentials as a singer-actress in various musicals for four decades now.
She has given unforgettable performances in the local stagings of “Evita”, “Next to Normal”, “Passion”, “Sweeney Todd”.
Currently the co-artistic director of Resorts World Manila, president of its Original Pilipino Performing Arts (OPPA) and a founder of Actor’s Actor Inc., this sister of actor-singer Raymond Lauchengco has done other great musicals since she started in 1978 when she was only 16 years old.
This includes “Fiddler on the Roof”, “The Sound of Music”, “West Side Story”, “Man of La Mancha”, “The Secret Garden”, “Into the Woods”, “Les Miserables”, “Camelot”, “Scrooge”, “A Chorus Line”, “The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe”, “Once on This Island”, “Miss Saigon” and many more.
She is now also a director, helming such acclaimed productions as “Little Women”, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “Peter Pan”. We can really consider her as one of the pillars of local theatre.
She currently plays another demanding role as Dina in Atlantis Theatrical’s staging of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, “The Band’s Visit”. Can she tell us more about her role?
“Dina is the female lead, the owner of a small cafe in a small town in Israel, Bet Hatikva. She had her dream and ambitions as a dancer when she was young, but she chose love over career, thinking marriage will fulfill her and make her happy, but it didn’t work out for her.
"She loves Arabian movies and she likes the actor Omar Sharif. So one of her solo songs is about Omar Sharif. Then she meets the leader of an Egyptian police band that mistakenly strays into their town, Tewfiq, played by Rody Vera, and she becomes infatuated with him being a conductor and working with music.
"‘The Band’s Visit’ is about how music brings people together, no matter what your race is or even if you have different beliefs, since music is a universal language.”
Preparing for “The Band’s Visit” is a real challenge for the cast.
“We’ve been preparing for about a year now. We have language coaches to train us in special classes for our Arab and Jewish or Yiddish accents. We have to practice singing with no vibratos, the lyrics almost spoken like Arabs do.
"May training din for roller skating for some characters, also on how to play some musical instruments like clarinet, trumpet and violin.
"We have to really prepare as members of the Arab and Jewish community here will watch us daw and we want to do it right. Some of them have already come to our rehearsals to watch us perform. The play runs for one hour and a half, no intermission.
"This is also so different as it is full of many silences, unlike before na dapat, no dead air. It’s so affecting that I’m often on the verge of tears while playing, specially towards the finale.”
Tickets are now available online at TicketWorld starting at Php 2,000. For updates, may contact Atlantis Theatrical at 02-650-5144/0917-838-1534 or visit their official Facebook page. You can also email them at shows@atlantistheatrical.com.
