3/5 stars

Continuing this unexpected trend, Panda Plan: The Magical Tribe defies all expectations as a marked improvement on its predecessor in almost every conceivable way.

It jettisons much of the baggage that bogged down the first film in favour of a fanciful jungle adventure that plays to the actor’s enduring strengths as a physical comedian.

The first time David Byrne’s disco musical “Here Lies Love” was publicly staged at Mass MoCA in 2012, Josh Dela Cruz was a bright-eyed ensemble actor thrilled by the novelty of joining a majority-Filipino cast.

Like many recent theater school grads, Dela Cruz was still trying to find his niche as a performer, oscillating between the pursuits of ethnic ambiguity — a casting asset — and cultural identity. But in post-rehearsal chow-downs with his fellow cast members, he felt at ease as his peers spoke about their Filipino upbringings and their experiences processing the show, which chronicles the rise and fall of the infamous Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The subject matter was emotionally taxing for some, but at the time, Dela Cruz said, “it was something that happened.” Past-tense.

Now, as he takes the stage in a new Center Theatre Group production as the late anti-Marcos leader Ninoy Aquino, he said, “it’s something that’s happening” — and not just in the Philippines.

“Here Lies Love,” which opens Wednesday at the Mark Taper Forum, three years after its Broadway debut, is arriving in downtown L.A. at a prescient moment. Protests have erupted throughout the U.S. in response to an ongoing federal immigration crackdown that some characterize as part of a broader push toward authoritarian rule. Meanwhile, across the globe, Marcos’ son, Philippine President Bongbong Marcos, and Vice President Sara Duterte, face twin impeachment complaints accusing them of high-level corruption and other violations of public trust.

Similar events worldwide have dovetailed with the narrative landscape of the musical, which centers on the dictator’s wife, Imelda Marcos, her rise to power and her fall from grace. It’s also staged to implicate the audience in the Marcos’ ascension to office, ultimately revealing how corrupt leaders often appear charming at first. The production, directed by CTG’s artistic director, Snehal Desai, is drenched in glitz and glamour that conceals its darker themes — until it doesn’t.

Desai chose “Here Lies Love” for this season long before President Trump deployed National Guard troops throughout the country, just as he selected CTG’s July production “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” — which ends with its titular character being taken into ICE custody — ahead of last summer’s immigration raids in L.A.

“I don’t have a crystal ball. I’m planning based on where I feel like we are, and what are the conversations we’re going to need,” Desai said during a recent “Here Lies Love” rehearsal break, noting that in the number “God Draws Straight” the lyrics talk about nuns and priests from the church leading the resistance, which mirrors the current moment in America.

“The playbook, which is political assassinations, it is censorship, it is martial law, is literally what we’re seeing happen,” Desai said.

Two weeks before opening night, the “Here Lies Love” cast plunged through the musical’s latter half before a lunch break.

They rehearsed in a small room in CTG’s annex building on Temple Street, which Desai said was shut down during last summer’s ICE protests. Ensemble members donned flared heels, Onitsuka Tigers, cloud slides and other shoes that evoke Imelda‘s infamous 3,000-pair collection, intentionally left unmentioned in Byrne’s musical.

“I hope that people that are Asian or Filipino leave with a sense of pride seeing themselves reflected on stage,” Joshua Dela Cruz said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re half or a quarter or an eighth, you’re Filipino. And this is our culture and our history that we carry.”

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

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The actors glided across the makeshift stage with panache, sparing no vocal force as they sung through the uptempo track “Please Don’t” and the acoustic ballad “God Draws Straight.”

“You can tell that they want it to be really good,” choreographer William Carlos Angulo said.

Indeed, the show’s leads said they felt a particular loyalty to the L.A. production, which is being performed in the city with the largest Filipino population outside the Philippines, amounting to over 500,000 residents.

Reanne Acasio, who plays Imelda, said that her role is far more delicate than her recent historic turns as each of the Schuyler sisters in Broadway’s “Hamilton.”

“Doing a show that talks about historical events with people who are all long gone by now is a very different experience than [performing for] people who are still traumatized by these events,” Acasio said.

The actor, who made her “Here Lies Love” debut in 2023 with Broadway’s first-ever all-Filipino cast, said that like many Filipino immigrants, her parents never voluntarily spoke about their time under martial law. So when Broadway show attendees told her they’d come with their families, she was amazed.

“The fact that this show was able to open up that door to conversation, to research on their own, was such a pivotal moment,” Acasio said, “not only for representation, but to start to heal some trauma that gets stuffed in the back of the closet.”

Chris Renfro, who plays Ferdinand Marcos, said being a part of the show has enabled conversation about the Marcos regime within their own family.

“I’ve begun to connect these little stories that they would tell me, and now I get to see them with a different color to them because they would — I mean, probably rightfully so — take the bad parts of the story,” Renfro said. “But now we’ve been talking about it very frankly.”

The musical is structured in a similar way, they said, opening with the joviality of a disco or Philippine noontime variety show, then slowly shedding that illusion.

“We keep on moving until you really can’t refute the evidence, and it becomes something that you have to confront,” they said.

It’s what Dela Cruz admires so much about Byrne’s story, which begins in “a very proud, very lighthearted place, almost nostalgic,” and ends in a spirit of confrontation.

“I think that’s the brilliance of David Byrne, where he kind of gets you comfortable with an uncomfortable conversation that you will later need to have after the show,” Dela Cruz said. “That’s why this show is so important now, and I really love how it’s being shaped for today’s audience.”

Desai kept most show revisions close to his chest but did reveal that “American Troglodyte,” a number about the Philippines’ simultaneous glorification and disparagement of American culture, will have several reprises, each meant to solicit a different response from the audience.

By the song’s third appearance, the director said, it’s a “wake-up moment” for everyone.

Over the years, “Here Lies Love” has been criticized as insensitive to the Filipino community in its perceived glamorization of Imelda and minimization of the atrocities committed by the Marcos regime.

In response, show producers in a 2023 statement said, “Democracies all over the world are under threat. The biggest threat to any democracy is disinformation, ‘Here Lies Love’ offers a creative way of re-information—an innovative template on how to stand up to tyrant.”

Joan Almedilla, who plays Aurora Aquino in the Taper production, said her wish is for audiences to feel a collective call-to-action against oppressive leaders.

“In the Philippines, this story is ‘the government versus the people,’ as opposed to now, ‘people versus people versus people versus the government,’” Almedilla said.

As guests leave the theater, the actor added, “I hope people sit there and say, ‘There’s more of us. What are we doing?’”

‘Wuthering Heights’

Directed by Emerald Fennell (R)

★★