David Byrne and Taper Director on the Show Reaching L.A.

Fascism has arrived and settled into Los Angeles. And before you say “Tell us something we don’t already know,” this refers to the opening on this coast of “Here Lies Love,” the David Byrne-created musical about the Philippines’ dictatorial First Lady, Imelda Marcos, now getting its L.A. premiere at the Mark Taper Forum. A complete different set of audiences is being posed with the musical query: Do disco balls and martial regulation combine?

During the present’s 2023 Broadway run, SRO audiences have been inspired to bounce in place and ponder despots at the same time — a larger disassotiative challenge than strolling and chewing gum at the same time, however hardly an insurmountable one. For this engagement (just opened, and newly prolonged by April 6), the viewers stays seated, since ripping seats out for ironic boogieing was a bridge too far for a Music Center venue. The good news: “Here Lies Love” stays certainly one of the most intriguing and rewarding “rock musicals” ever to emerge from the mind of a major pop determine. And that’s with or without the modern staging that prompted New York theatergoers to have to make use of their brains to determine out which technique to transfer as ushers actually directed visitors on a always shifting dance flooring.

Byrne admits that he never foresaw the musical being produced without the fixed viewers participation that has been part of all earlier productions. But he’s not objecting to it being achieved as more of a conventional proscenium musical in L.A., thoughts you… just questioning if the impression will likely be the same.

“I’m very curious how the non-immersive staging will work,” Byrne tells Variety, in an e mail interview about the Taper manufacturing. He’s busy abroad together with his acclaimed “Who Is the Sky?” tour — a touring present that has its personal revolutionary sense of invention — so he should get stories on how effectively this version has weathered a less radicalized treatment. “The immersive disco setting put the audience in the position of the Philippine people, and that worked,” he says, “so I’m curious if that connection will still happen.”

Initial viewers and critic responses have been extremely favorable, including among those who’ve some experience of earlier displays, which stretch again to an preliminary off-Broadway run at New York’s Public in 2013. The path of this version has been undertaken by the man who directs the Center Theatre Group as an establishment: CTG inventive director Snehal Desai. He’s needed to direct “Here Lies Love” since he noticed it at the Public 13 years in the past. And as soon as he took the reins of the Music Center venues, he got here to imagine that the Mark Taper Forum was immersive sufficient. It does have the western United States’ most well-known thrust stage, after all, so the line between viewers and actors is more thinly drawn even on a traditional night time out in the up-close-and-personal, 739-seat area.

Says Desai, “When I noticed the present in 2013 at the Public, I used to be just so taken with it — taken with the experience of it, however also just the storytelling and the sung-through format. You’re there for this form of disco celebration celebration the place you’re form of like, ‘Well, I know this isn’t a great particular person. What am I doing?’ The complicity [with Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos] is occurring, and then the rug is pulled out, and immediately, what was a form of a celebration turns into nearly a rally. I viscerally keep in mind that experience.

“When I saw it at the Public, everyone was standing,” the director notes. “But then when it went to Broadway, I experienced it from the seats.” (The balcony of the Broadway Theatre remained intact, and a few elevated mezzanine rows have been constructed on both facet of the so-called dance flooring.) “And I used to be like, ‘Oh, the storytelling still works.’

“The thing about the Taper is, it doesn’t have that fourth-wall separation. We’re all in the same room. When someone gets up to go to the bathroom, everyone notices everything! So I was like, I think we can tell the story in this space, and we don’t have to rip out the seats, but we can activate the entire Taper. We can have different areas [amid the audience] where we stage things, and then we can still have moments where we invite folks to stand up and join with us, or maybe have a few members come on stage so that it can lend itself to the experience. But it doesn’t have to be fully immersive in the way that it was at the Public. Because both times I watched it, I thought, ‘This whole element of it is fun, it’s intriguing, but there’s no reason this couldn’t be staged traditionally, either.’”

With everybody seated on a rake, Desai didn’t assume it still made sense to faux the night time is beginning out inside an precise Seventies disco, as in New York. Changing that opening locale supplied an opportunity to do one thing even more particularly Filipino, he thought, after consulting with the largely AAPI inventive team. “We knew we’re not gonna make it so everyone’s moving around the whole time. But how can we make it a space particularly that, particularly to the Filipino community, is a world they recognize. That’s where my scenic designer said, ‘You know, the show lends itself to these noontime variety shows that they have in the Philippines. There are these long-running shows that are oftentimes multi hours, with a variety-show feel, and there’s a host who’s holding everything together.’ And I thought, ‘That might be it. We can be a noontime variety show format.’ Then the audience is a studio audience, invited still to interact like a studio audience is, but we’re not fully in a club disco world the whole time.”

That entailed the Taper’s dramaturg writing up one new character not in earlier productions, the drag-queen TV host, Imeldific (Aura Mayari, of Season 15 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race”), who supplies a little bit of spoken scene-setting close to the starting to assist familiarize the viewers with the milieu, in a musical that is for all intents and functions sung-through. (Projections with names, dates and pertinent historic particulars also assist present context that the songs alone can’t.) But the new emcee doesn’t considerably change the present, and it doesn’t keep in both a disco or a TV studio for lengthy. Desai factors out what a logistical challenge “Here Lies Love” is to design and direct, in any setting: “It’s a crazy show. There’s 31 songs and there’s 30 transitions” — all in a really fast-moving hour and a half, with no intermission.

Given all those doable speed bumps — from having to determine core historic details while crooning is happening, to rapid-fire scene and costume adjustments that often appear to be occurring even sooner than the b.p.m. tempo arrange by Byrne’s and Fatboy Slim’s busy score — the Taper manufacturing has not only met most of the requirements of earlier productions however established some new ones. The dancing on stage is more vigorous and thrilling than ever, as if William Carlos Angulo, the choreographer, felt that he needed to make up for the lack of participatory viewers dancing (or shuffling) by making what the solid is doing that a lot more vivacious. David Byrne followers make up one pure viewers for the present, and Filipinos another. But if anybody who doesn’t give a whoop about Talking Heads or the Phillipines is available in wanting the conventional virtues of costume and dance — and perhaps some head-turning whiplash as the action strikes round the viewers — this “Here Lies Love” has the impact of providing show-biz enchantments even for those less intrigued by its unique points.

But, with apologies to Tracy Chapman, we are talkin’ about a revolution. So how is the present’s political relevance holding up in 2026?

Talk about a loaded query: Even should you’ve adopted the course of the present again not just to its first staging however to Byrne’s authentic 2010 concept double-album, there will likely be loads of moments in this manufacturing of “Here Lies Love” the place you could have to defy your instinctual feeling that this was written in the last few years as an allegory.

Says Byrne, “I’m aware there’s a huge Filipino community in L.A .and around, so the show should resonate for them — it’s their history. Some may look on the People Power revolution as a positive example for the world (I do), while others will be Marcos loyalists (guess who is back in power!).” That last comment refers to Bongbong Marcus, son of the late Imelda and Ferdinand, who now leads the nation, not so many many years after his mother and father have been forcefully pushed out of it.

Byrne continues, “I hope non-Filipinos will see some parallels in the present — how populist leaders can really sometimes ship on their guarantees — however there’s the hazard of seducing the public and holding on to energy too lengthy.

“The story has sadly remained relevant beyond the Philippines,” Byrne provides. “Without giving too much away, the peaceful People Power revolution that ousted a corrupt dictator and his wife is hugely encouraging — it has been done before and can be done again.” And he leaves the apparent up to date parallels as that, for now.

Desai is more specific about the reverberations this has for any viewers in the current day — that are more likely to be acquired with appreciative nods in L.A. If the present have been being staged someplace deep in MAGA nation, it would start to change into as uncomfortable for them as it’s for Claudius in “Hamlet” when he just sits down to look at a pleasant play… even if its take on the Marcoses was all conceived during the Obama years.

Desai was in rehearsals once we first spoke with him last month. “As we’re rehearsing right now, there is a big march happening here in downtown L.A.,” he said. “And actually every day as we work on this present, what we’re seeing in this nation is form of the fascist dictators’ playbook, proper? Don Lemon just bought arrested. It’s press that they’re actually going after today. Yesterday was about the censorship that’s coming out with TikTok now altering possession. A few days before, it was the entrance strains in Minneapolis. The people who’ve been main the fight are the clergy, and even the Pope has spoken out. So a whole lot of the issues that are occurring are working very parallel to what occurred in the Philippines during the Marcos regime. And we all know that this eager to enact censorship and martial regulation in this nation is one thing that this president desires.

“So what I loved about this musical is, I felt that I went on a journey and experience, but I left reminded that I can empower myself and we can all empower ourselves by coming together, by rallying together. And you know, I didn’t think when we planned this a year ago exactly how far we would be in terms of the moment of what’s happening nationally.”

One sensitivity any time “Here Lies Love” has been produced has been to the sensibilities of components of the Filipino community that might suspect the present is a glorification of the Marcoses (although, as Byrne said, a few would possibly welcome that), given how few musicals have in the end unsympathetic characters in the leads. In the Taper manufacturing, you possibly can really feel Imelda being given some sharp and brittle edges earlier into her girlhood scenes than she was on Broadway, the place she was a bit more mistakable for a Disney princess in her opening studying of the title music, before she more and more breaks dangerous. Loads of community outreach was achieved in New York to verify that most in the Filipino community who have been engaged “got” it, and have been in a position to take delight in a present with an all-Filipino solid and primarily Filipino behind-the-scenes team, even if the Marcoses hardly immediate delight.

“I think the story is the start of the conversation, right?” says the director. “We have worked really hard, particularly in the second act, to make sure this is not meant to glamorize anyone. And if anything, the folks who have the arc of the journey, who have the change, are the community that leads to the People Power revolution. So Imelda, Marcos and Aquino (a more heroic figure in the action), they don’t have full redemptive arcs like traditional musical characters, which is something David and I talked a lot about. But someone needs to, so that it’s a fulfilling experience.” It’s an attention-grabbing conceit: Although the present has some secondary characters to root for, the real hero and protagonist is the long-suffering, finally triumphant refrain line, because it have been — a chorale that will get the last phrase in the present, when the neo-disco rhythms give technique to an attractive power-to-the-people people music.

“L.A. is the home to the largest Filipino community outside of the Philippines,” factors out Desai, who himself has Indian heritage. “As an artistic producer, this is I think the fifth project I’ve worked on that is a Filipino story. There is an amazing community, but then Filipino artists, it’s like they grow up eating and drinking musical theater as well as karaoke and stuff like that, and they’re just such great performers. So this was one of the easiest casting processes — easy in that I had many, many options of who we could cast for this show. I wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, where’s my Imelda?’ I could have cast the show so many times over.”

There are a few people in the solid with earlier “Here Lies Love” experience: “Joan Almedilla, who’s our Aurora, was really certainly one of the first performers that David called when, after the concept album got here out, she carried out in the Carnegie Hall live shows they did. Then as Imelda we’ve Reanne Acasio, who was on Broadway playing Aurora and then was the Imelda understudy. We have Carol Angeli, who performs Estrella, and then Joshua Dela Cruz (as Aquino), who was concerned when the present was at Williamstown. So we’ve artists who’re concerned with the present in all different gestations of its life. And then the remainder of the company is L.A. actors who’re just phenomenal voices…

“The design team is predominantly Filipino. Our music director is Filipino. Our dramaturg is. The process was made to make sure that we incorporated as many voices as possible, including so many folks who had their own personal experiences of experiencing martial law or knowing family members who were impacted… And you’ll hear a lot more Tagalog in the storytelling. There’s some traditional Filipino folk dancing that makes an appearance, some tinkering with things like that. I wanted it to feel like an environment that the community would recognize and see themselves reflected in. And the costumes do that a lot, too.”

Other tinkering concerned including a little bit of music not heard in the Broadway version. “One of the issues that was a part of the present, however we’re now bringing again as a chorus or reprise, is ‘American Troglodyte,’ which is the music that opens the present. As the opening music, it’s actually rousing. But you’re like, ‘Wait, what are you saying? I’m a bit uncomfortable.’ And you see that music and that phrase form of go on its personal journey, when it’s first part of a big disco quantity and the second time when it’s just sung a cappella on to you. And then there are two songs that weren’t in there, introduced in from David’s concept album. ‘Never So Big’ is a music with Estrella, who’s Imelda’s nanny and housekeeper however also confidante, whom Imelda in the end turns her again on. We needed to verify that that throughline was there, because the entire present was created as a music cycle between those two women, initially. And the other added music is ‘Whole Man,’ which is available in at the end. I needed a second the place you noticed a bit little bit of Imelda unraveling, however nobody actually questioning it, and then I also needed a second just to indicate Aquino sitting in a jail cell for seven years while she’s out in the world philosophizing about love and magnificence.

“With this show, you’re kind of like shot out of a cannon, especially if you’re new to the story. It doesn’t stop. And so it was a little bit of, like, where can we put in some of these moments where we can just give everyone a second to reflect and breathe, and also have these characters on stage have a moment for us to have connection or stillness, before we get into the next chapter of things.”

Byrne, for his half, is joyful to see this manufacturing occurring, even if he in all probability gained’t get to see it. “Sadly I won’t be around for the opening; my tour dates were already set and tickets on sale.” But, he says, “Selfishly, yes, if this works, I’m sure other theaters will be watching and will want to pick it up. The music and the karaoke-style vocals are not typical for Broadway-style musicals, so that could be a plus for some demographics as well. A key ingredient is the sound: it should really sound like a club, plenty of low end and groove, which is also atypical for Broadway.”

He didn’t quit on the present discovering a wider in the viewers in the 13 years between concept album and Broadway, and he’s not seeing an end in sight for it now. “I believe it has plenty of life left,” Byrne says. “Look at all the pop artists who have done disco and dance music records in the last few years! And the story, as you say, is maybe more close to home and relevant than ever.”

“Here Lies Love” runs at the Mark Taper Forum by April 5. Tickets could be discovered at centertheatregroup.org.