'The Reconciliation Dinner': A new play that makes us face our toxic politics

“The Reconciliation Dinner” by Floy Quintos is a partisan political play. But it tries to reach across a bitter divide and help its audience understand “the other side.” Sometimes that other side is no further than someone in your family or your own household.

In “The Reconciliation Dinner,” the main protagonists are two middle-aged professional women, Dina and Susan, who had been as close as sisters ever since they met in school.

The 2016 elections that catapulted Rodrigo Duterte to power disrupted their friendship when Dina and her gun-loving husband Bert threw their support behind Duterte.

On the night when then President Duterte allowed Marcos Senior to be buried a hero, Susan was distraught while Dina thought her friend was being overdramatic, collapsing their friendship into a fault line that many in the Philippines, and indeed around the world in these polarized times, will find familiar.

After years of estrangement, and a year after Dina and Bert were among the many who voted for Marcos Junior, Dina and Susan try to patch things up at a reconciliation dinner with their respective, equally partisan families. They promise each other not to talk about politics over dinner, but that’s where the conversation inevitably goes, inflaming not only fresh political fissures but even generational ones, when Susan’s militant gay son faults her kakampink parents for giving up the fight too soon.

The crafty playwright Floy Quintos uses the stage to explore emotions still raw from a toxic election just barely a year ago. He humanizes “the other side” by portraying Dina as the sympathetic, magnanimous friend who keeps reaching out to the losing team, while acting as a moderating influence on her sneering, trollish husband. And when Dina faces a personal crisis that cries out for sisterly support, it’s a stark reminder that friendship should survive politics. But can it really?

The play captures the spirit of the times by projecting on the screen behind the actors the tit-for-tat on social media that have been infinitely more noxious than face-to-face interactions. What happens online spills over into physical social settings and threatens to rip society apart.

Quintos makes his audience confront questions that some are still too pained to consider:

Can we just move on? And what does moving on mean anyway?

After a year, are we better off?

Can friends rise above a deep political divide?

I will not be spoiling anything by saying that there is no full-blown reconciliation at the dinner. This play is a mirror after all, not a fantasy. But there are enough realistic twists in the inter-family squabble to inject a vaccine of hope into a diseased body politic.

With humor, believable characters, fine acting and dialog that rings true, “The Reconciliation Dinner” provides its audience at least grist for catharsis. Despite the noble intent, this play will appeal only to one side of the divide. Perhaps the audience will go home with a better understanding of the other side. If not, they will surely feel better about their choices, even if they were on the losing team.

"The Reconciliation Dinner" will run its last shows this weekend, May 27-28, at the Spotlight Black Box Theater in Circuit Makati. — LA, GMA Integrated News