MANILA, Philippines ? The setup looked simple ? four chairs, four small tables, and two clothes-racks onstage. However, the moment the actors began the first monologue, ?I Am Man,? it became clear this was going to be more complex than the stage and its four actors.

Because there is more to making a powerful and revolutionary play than just being inspired by ?The Vagina Monologues,? and reconfiguring it to highlight man?s ?humanity.?

There must be more to New Voice Company?s ?The Male Voice? than just telling the individual stories of men to probe their existence as affected members of family and society. There must be more to it than that cliche of an ending: Men will choose to be part of the solution, instead of the problem.

There were fantastic monologues, of course, such as ?The Lord?s Servants Speak up,? about three priests across generations talking about God as not man but also woman, and of Catholicism as a contributing factor to the continued oppression of women; and ?LRT/MRT,? on the dynamics of equality in the everyday act of boarding the train.

The actors representing four generations of men were also fantastic?Tommy Abuel and Michael Williams, as expected; Joel Trinidad, who was sadly underutilized; and Joaquin Valdes, despite his stutter and difficulty with Filipino.

Redundant

Obviously, the problem here was with the material. Many of the monologues were bogged down by the need to tell a story. A repetitive one at that.

And so ?The Male Voice? gave us a peek into lives that had to do with an abusive father, grandfather and husband, painful words, brotherhood, HIV-AIDS, homosexuality, frat men, the military, the macho dancer, the OFW, the ex-convict, the cheating husband.

They were shown as victims, too, bound to the premise of violence, as both perpetrator and victim, and the apology required for whatever hurt or pain they have caused.

But at a certain point, the stories became difficult to tell apart, and the narrative mode became redundant. After all, how many stories could you hear about the dysfunction abusive family relationships create? How many stories of regret and change could you work with from there?

Eve Ensler?s ?The Vagina Monologues? worked because we got a sense of how the individual monologues spoke to the rest of the world of women, even when they were racially and religiously distinct from each other.

Given this model, it?s unacceptable that ?The Male Voice? failed to deal with the concepts that surrounded, and the stereotypes propagated about, the expectations of Filipino men.

The shorter monologues, grouped into montages, worked quite well at hitting the bigger concepts of brotherhood (?Idol Ko si Kuya?), of societal pressure (?First-born?); of media images (?Katulad ni Erap?); of tradition (?My Father, His Father and Me, ?The Belt?); of crazy mothers (?Dessert, Anyone??). So why couldn?t this be done with the longer monologues?

Hodgepodge

In truth, we are at a time when it?s impossible for the Filipino male to be not oppressed, in this day and age when the capitalist enterprise oppresses us all, gender notwithstanding.

Particularly for the Filipino male, more than at any other time, the oppression is propagated by everything from the images media creates of the ?ideal man,? to the strange dynamics spawned by the tension between gender equality and traditional chivalrous expectations.

?The Male Voice? could?ve dealt with all of this head-on. Instead, it gave us a hodgepodge of stories that seemed to be bound only by two things: a man as narrator, and some form of violence that always lurked in his life.

Surprisingly enough, there were no monologues on love and sex; on dealing with women outside of marriage; on struggling with a non-stereotypical trait or hobby, on being expected to be the padre de pamilya and breadwinner; on being chivalrous at a time when it could be seen as patronizing; or taking on the challenge of equality and paying dearly for it.

Probably the only thing more surprising than the lack of sex and bite in this play was its daring to deal with homosexuality?as if this voice was the male?s as well.

What, no gay monologues? That?s a disservice to the whole enterprise of homosexual empowerment, as it is an injustice to the male voice.

Throughout the monologues, there seemed to be an effort at being politically correct, at not speaking of women?or gays, for that matter?as objects of men?s affection and hate.

There was an effort at not being offensive or aggressive, particularly on issues that mattered. Instead, there was an effort to focus only on the male experience with himself.

Creative way

There must be a creative way of having men speak about themselves in relation to the world, without having to be apologetic or spending too much time giving us a context: ?I did this, because this is what happened to me, I am sorry.?

What about: ?I do this, because this is me, deal with it, or don?t. I am man, hear me roar!? Or: ?I am this, because of you. Now, where do we go from here??

In the end, there was nothing new or extraordinary about ?The Male Voice,? nothing I hadn?t read in books or watched on TV, nothing I could take with me as I stepped out of the theater.

Nothing here but a lot of men talking, which we have in our everyday lives, anyway.