Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

NEW YORK – What happens when you bring an age-old religious tradition from the Philippines to the modern world of Hoboken, New Jersey? Conflict, one may say, and in Linda Faigao-Hall’s play God, Sex and Blue Water, there’s more than enough conflict among the characters to keep the play afloat.

Laling Kintanar (Lydia Gaston) and her daughter Clarita (Leanne Cabrera) move to Hoboken from an island around Cebu in the Philippines to live with Laling’s brother Max (Andrew Eisenman). Devout believers, mother and daughter bring with them their religious beliefs and idisyncrasies, including Laling’s self-crucifixion, much to the consternation of her now Americanized brother Max.

The virginal Clarita left the convent as a novice and in more ways than one, she gets culture-shocked the moment she steps on American soil. A dashing young American man named Ryan McCarthy (Brian Andersen) enters her life and makes it just a little bit more complicated.

Clarita gets smitten with Ryan and thinks that she might be falling in love with him. Her personal conflict is two-fold, one with her mother, who doesn’t like the idea of her falling in love this soon; and the other with Ryan because she is keeping a big secret from him, a secret too huge she fears he won’t ever understand. The fact that Ryan is agnostic makes their relationship more challenging and Clarita begins to question if God intended for her to meet him so that she could change the way he thinks, and not the romantic way she had hoped.

The four actors bring to life characters that are humanely flawed and do so wonderfully. Gaston is magnificent with her performance of a true and unrelenting believer, who would have herself crucified every single year because of a vow she had to make when God gave her a gift, Clarita.

Cabrera as Clarita was such a sight to behold. She was both enigmatic and ethereal and made the viewers believe that she herself has a gift from God, and that this gift would be gone if she continued her relationship with Ryan. She delivered her lines flawlessly and poignantly and her moments questioning her conflicted self were among the play’s highlights.