As a musical, “Here Lives Love,” has its merits, but most of those have nothing to do with the music by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. The musical about the still-living Imelda Marcos’ rise to political and social prominence in the Philippines will never be a great musical, but the production at the Mark Taper Forum which runs until 22 March 2026 had an all-Filipino cast and a history lesson both outside the theater and within the program to recommend it. Understanding the history of the Philippines is important for Asian Americans and for understanding the history of AAPI in the US.

Imelda Romualdez Marcos (2 July 1929) is alive and her legacy continues to influence the Philippines. The musical’s timeline only goes to 1986, when Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda fled to Hawaii. The historical timeline in the program goes to the present.

If you hated disco, don’t worry. This disco-pop musical is written by Scotland-born US-raised David Byrne and British Fatboy Slim doesn’t catch the infectious energy and beat of the disco greats like Donna Summer or the Bee Gees. For disco hates, you won’t have disco beats beating your brain senseless but for disco lovers, you also won’t feel moved by the beat. Both Byrne and Fatboy Slim are of a generation who witnessed the exile and return of Imelda to the Philippines. Byrne is 73. Fatboy Slim is 62. The two decided to do a concept album based on Byrne’s research into the Philippines former First Lady, presenting the music first at the Festival of the Arts in Australia in 2006 and later in a concert at Carnegie Hall in 2007. The musical was first presented at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts’s Hunter Center for Performing Arts 21-24 June 2012.

The Mark Taper Forum production is directed by the Center Theatre Group’s Artistic Director, Snehal Desai, who had previously directed “American Idiot” at the Taper. His concept frames the action with the audience in a TV studio instead of a disco club, waiting to see a TV show based on a popular Filipino variety show, “Wowowee.”

Instead of a disco DJ, the narrator is a drag queen, “Imeldific,” who personifies Imelda’s love of opulence. Portrayed by Aura Mayari, Filipino American drag performer who was born and raised in the Philippines, Imeldic is our MC for the evening.  Fans of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” will be familiar with Aura Mayari who competed in 2023 (15th season) and won the girl group challenge. This is a great decision for this venue and Desai manages to keep the feeling of the audience being part of the scene. You might be pulled up on the stage or feel cast members rushing by. Cast members may stop and give you a look and you’ll want to sometimes turn your focus from the stage to other areas of the Taper. Los Angelenos who have easy access to TV audience opportunities will be right at home with this.

Imeldific reminds the audience how people from the US coarsely display their wealth, but how some in the Philippines year to be that crassly ostentatious. When the audience first meets Imelda, she is the poor Imelda Romualdez (Reanne Acasio), whose best friend is her unpaid nanny/maid, Estrella Cumpas (Carol Angeli) and Imelda yearns to join the ranks of the wealthy. She meets the son of a rich and powerful Aquino family, Ninoy Aquino (Joshua Dela Cruz), but he rejects her because she is too tall.  Imelda wins a beauty pageant and moves from nowheresville Leyte to Manila. There she meets Ferdinand Marcos (Chris Renfro). He was  36.  She was 24. Their courtship lasted 11 days.

Ferdinand and Imelda become a political power couple and their influence reaches beyond the Philippines, but their lavish lifestyle, particularly when Ferdinand becomes the 10th president of the Philippines, cause some grumbling. All is not so cozy between the Marcoses; Ferdinand has a particularly embarrassing affair with a minor American actress, Dovie Beams, in 1970.

Ninoy Aquino, now a senator, becomes one of the most influential critics of the Marcoses. He leaves the Philippines due to the threat of violence,  but eventually returns, only to be assassinated at the airport (21 August 1983). Aquino’s mother, Aurora Aquino (Joan Almedilla) is portrayed in the musical, but the eventual president (1986-1992), Corazon “Cory” Aquino, Ninoy Aquino’s wife, is so briefly portrayed and has so few lines, the role isn’t even listed in the program.

Any temptation to compare “Here Lies Love” to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita” will find the former lacking. As a musical, “Here Lies Love” premiered off-Broadway at The Public Theater in NYC in 2013 under the direction of two-time Tony Award winner Alex Timbers with Korean American Tony Award-winner Ruthie Ann Miles in the lead role. The musical had its Broadway premiere in 2023 at the Broadway Theatre, but only ran for 33 preview performances and 149 regular performances with Arielle Jacobs as Imelda. While like “Evita,” this musical is about a First Lady and is in the sung-through format, “Here Lies Love” has no soaring song the elevate it into pop culture immortality like “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” Evita Peron was an actress, and died at 33. Dying young, gives Peron a mystique that Imelda, now 96, won’t have. “Evita” also won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. “Here Lies Love” was nominated for four Tony Awards (Best Original Score, Best Choreography, Best Scenic Design of a Musical and Best Sound Design of a Musical.  (The winners were “Suffs” for Best Original Score Written for the Theatre, “Illinoise” for Best Choreography, “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” for Best Scenic Design, and “The Outsiders” for Best Sound.)

“Evita” runs about two hours and change with intermission. Act I has about 15 musical numbers and Act II has 16. That’s 31 or about five musical numbers per every 15 minutes. “Here Lives Love,” has 26 which is a little over eight musical numbers in its intermissionless 90 minutes. As such “Here Lies Love” feels overstuffed with music. According to Wikipedia, two songs from the original concept album (“Never So Big” and “The Whole Man”) were added to this Los Angeles production. Not enough time is given to appreciate or highlight a singular song.  The first half feels like one of those discotheque nights where the DJ programs music that fuses into a solid block as opposed to shaping and shifting the evening’s moods. The cast all have lovely voices, and it is wonderful that Acasio, the Broadway understudy for both Imelda and Aurora Aquino, gets to shine as Imelda, but none of the songs and their singers really  get the chance to really break out like a Donna Summer disco solo because of the rush to get through all the musical numbers.

As with the another sung-through musical, “Miss Saigon, which was written by two French men, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr., this musical is by White men looking at an Asian culture. “Miss Saigon” catapulted Filipina Lea Salonga to fame–she played the titular lead role as part of both the original West End (1989) and Broadway  (1991) casts. Salonga did appear in the 2023 Broadway production from July 11 to August 19 as Aurora Aquina, the mother of Ninoy Aquino. This musical, “Here Lies Love, never quite explains how a poor girl had an unpaid nanny as a child and makes it seem as if Imelda didn’t come from a large family with siblings and half-siblings.

People might think I am shoe obsessed and that Imelda Marcos  had a lot in common. Imelda as more than a woman who  infamously had about 3,000 pairs of shoes that were discovered in the Malacañang Palace after she and her husband fled the Philippines in 1986 to land safely in Hawaii. The shoes are not a big part of this musical, “Here Lies Love,” but you can learn a lot about the recent history of the Philippines and the rise of Imelda and her husband Ferdinand Marcos.

Some of those shoes are now at the Marikina Shoe Museum  in Manila. Imelda wore a size 8.5. I wear a children’s 2.5.  Our shoe obsessions are different. But this musical did make me wonder about Melania Trump’s shoe closet. The current presidential administration’s style predilections could be considered Imeldific and that should be a warning to us all.

“Here Lies Love”  doesn’t touch on Imelda’s shoe obsession and doesn’t really work as a disco-pop party either. But if the only thing you know about Imelda is her shoes, then this musical will provide an education. The musical itself is misleading and too intellectually shallow to explain Imelda and the Marcos families rise since Imelda’s return from exile in 1991 with her children. This century might be time for the talents from the Philippines to take on the topic of Imeldific in a musical that has more cultural ties and historical depth than “Here Lies Love.”

“Here Lies Love” continues at the  Mark Taper Forum and has been extended until 5 April 2026. For tickets and more information, visit CenterTheatreGroup.org.