Why we need ‘The Notebook’ again

The Filipino cast and creative team bring Nicholas Sparks’ familiar love story to the stage for its international production outside Broadway

Why we need to watch beloved musical even when we already know the story

There are love stories we watch or read once, and there are love stories we carry with us. The Notebook belongs to the second category.

For many, Nicholas Sparks’ story of Noah and Allie is already familiar territory—the young lovers, the years apart, the impossible choices, the letters, the memories, and that painful question of whether love can survive everything life throws at it. The 2004 film became a modern romance classic, making Noah and Allie’s love story part of popular culture. In my case, I developed a huge crush on Ryan Gosling.

So, why watch The Notebook again? Because this time, we get to see it through Filipino eyes.

Theatre Group Asia’s The Notebook: The Musical, which opened on Sept. 3 at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater in Circuit Makati, set the international premiere of the Broadway musical. Interestingly, the most exciting distinction about it is one that has little to do with Broadway at all.

It is 100 percent Filipino in the people bringing it to life. As Filipino-American director Nicholas Polonio shared, it is not just the actors onstage. Not just the covers. The creative team, designers, musicians, crew, and artists behind the production are all Filipino. And that, I believe, changes the experience.

At the media launch, Polonio also spoke about the production as a meeting point between the local and the international. The Notebook is a globally known story being imagined entirely through Filipino artistry.

“Every single artist on the team is Filipino,” Polonio emphasized. “It is a reflection, I think, of Filipino talent, imagination, and artistry in a truly global and local context simultaneously.”

There is something particularly exciting about that idea. The Notebook may be set in coastal North Carolina, but the world we are about to see has been created by Filipino imagination.

How does a Filipino artist imagine an American coastal town? How does a Filipino actor inhabit characters whose lives may be culturally different from ours, yet whose deepest emotions, like falling in love, losing someone, making difficult choices, and growing older, are instantly recognizable?

Those are questions worth experiencing inside a theater, and TGA has come up with an impressive cast to answer them.

Allie and Noah are portrayed by three pairs of performers to showcase the relationship at different stages of their lives. Philippine theater icon Celeste Legaspi plays Older Allie opposite respected theater actor Rody Vera as Older Noah. International singer and performer Morissette takes on Middle Allie, with Laurence Mossman as Middle Noah. Completing the trio are Sheena Belarmino as Young Allie and Benedix Ramos as Young Noah.

Sheena Belarmino (left) and Benedix Ramos bring the urgency of first love to young Allie and young Noah 

That casting choice gives the story a physical reminder that love changes as people do. Young Allie and Noah carry the urgency and innocence of first love. Middle Allie and Noah confront the consequences of choices made along the way. Older Allie and Noah face perhaps the most painful question of all. That is, what happens to love when memory itself begins to disappear?

That is what I love the most about The Notebook. It becomes bigger than romance. It becomes a story about remembering, choosing, growing older, and the people and moments we desperately want to hold on to.

The musical also gives the familiar story a new emotional language through the original music and lyrics of singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson. Known for her intimate songwriting and pop sound, Michaelson’s score gives voice and life to the characters’ hopes, fears, memories, and devotion. The book by Bekah Brunstetter translates Sparks’ beloved story for the stage.

There is another reason why seeing The Notebook onstage can feel different from watching the movie at home. The theater experience asks us to sit inside it.

We watch performers breathe, sing, struggle, and fall in love only a few meters away. We hear the music live. We experience the pauses and silences with an audience. We become part of the room where the story unfolds.

And because this production is being performed and created by Filipino artists, there is another layer of connection. We are watching some of our fellow Pinoys take a story created abroad and make it their own.

That, for me, is one of the most compelling reasons to see The Notebook: The Musical. It is not because we don’t know the story, but precisely because we do. We already know where Noah and Allie’s story begins. We know they will face separation. We know life will complicate their love. We know memory will become instrumental in their story.

What we don’t know is how this Filipino cast and creative team will make us feel it all over again.

After seeing the sample performance by the cast during the launch, I have a strong prediction that this staging is one for the notebooks. Wink, wink.

The Notebook: The Musical runs Sept. 3 to 20 at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater in Circuit Makati. Tickets are priced from P900 to P5,500 and are available through TicketWorld. — Kate Adajar