The Making of ‘Here Lies Love’: How David Byrne, Disco, Dictators and Filipino Pride Come Together in Broadway’s Boldest New Musical
Here Lies Love,” a stage musical created by David Byrne, is to let audiences know that the Broadway Theatre in Times Square is a disco.
Or, at least, it has been transformed into a reasonable facsimile of one, with the audience on the floor standing, shifting and swaying, and occasionally even dancing, in an immersive experience the likes of which Broadway has rarely if ever seen.
But the “fooling around” —no, that part still doesn’t apply. Not in a show that, beyond the bopping, tells a story of how easily democracy can turn into dictatorship (and, through peaceful revolution), back again, as viewed through the prism of the eventually dictatorial regime of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in the Philippines. “Life During Martial Law” could be an alternate title for the show, which asks the musical question: Does real democracy stand a chance, if old-school authoritarianism has a good beat and you can dance to it?
Sitting on a plush couch in the mezzanine lobby of the Broadway Theatre just before the audience is let in for a Thursday night preview shortly before opening night, musical-theater legend Lea Salonga is having more than slight déjà vu.
