Capinding’s role as Marcos Sr ranks 3rd in ANC’s "10 Best Performances" list

In his year-ender about Philippine theater’s Top Plays, Musicals, and Performances of 2023, ANC reviewer Vladimir Bunoan ranked actor (and Ateneo de Manila Junior High School Assistant Principal for Formation) Ron Capinding #3 in his list of “10 Best Performances of 2023.” Of Capinding’s work as President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in the play “The Impossible Dream,” Bunoan writes, “Capinding bravely chose not to do yet another impersonation of Marcos (who had more than his fair share of impersonators, mostly in comedy revues) but instead highlighted his intellectual arrogance and hubris in this riveting imaginary political showdown with Benigno Aquino Jr. (played with surprising calm by Romnick Sarmenta).”

Read the full article here.

Bunoan was not the only one who raved about Capinding’s performance:

“I thought I could actually hear the Marcos vain glory and grandiloquence in Ron’s superb playing of Marcos.” 
-Gibbs Cadiz, former Theater Editor for Lifestyle, Philippine Daily Inquirer

“Thank you for that excellently frightening performance of a devil dictator. Frightening because it made me delight in evil. And truth spouted about our idioticized nation from the mouth of the very one that gobbled us all up. How dangerous is the hope that you opened up the deceiving doors of. Ron, you had great in-the-moment thinking, riding on the lines with twists and turns, opening Bacchus multiple-faced doors and leading us to whirligigs. Making us face the darkest labyrinths of the Filipino spirit.”
-Dr. Anton Juan, veteran director, playwright, filmmaker, and tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA 

Written by Ateneo de Manila University alumnus and Loyola Schools Theater Arts Program of the Fine Arts Department faculty (on study leave) Guelan Luarca, “The Impossible Dream” was among three one-act plays comprising Kumprontasyon. The anthology first ran as a thesis production by Melvin Lee, the play’s director, in September 2023 at the PETA Theater Center in Quezon City. A provocative work that confronts viewers with our country’s historical past, Kumprontasyon was then restaged from January 18-21, 2024, also at the same venue.