SCENES & SCORES: Why ‘Para Kay B’ will break your heart (and make you question love!)

They say only one in five lovers actually lasts. The rest? Lessons learned, scars, and those late-night texts you never sent. Para Kay B puts all that right onstage, and suddenly your own past heartaches feel like part of the show.

A novel turned play, a play turned reckoning

When Ricky Lee penned Para Kay B in 2008, he did not so much draft a love story as invent this paradox: that only one in every five who fall in love will ever find happiness. Over a decade hence, director Yong Tapang Jr. and playwright-adapter Eljay Castro Deldoc have turned that paradox into a theatrical event that is as personal as it is confrontational. In their staging, the theater ceases to function as mere platform for romance; it is a playscript brought to life, a living page upon which characters can walk, suffer, resist, and, in fleeting mercy, rejoice.

Lee himself confessed to being profoundly moved to see his novel staged: “Masarap, very fulfilling,” he remarked after the curtain fell. To him, the play does more than adapt—it resurrects; it grants his text a second pulse in another medium, attesting that love stories, even those fated to fracture, endure precisely through their capacity for renewal.

At its core stands Mario Magallona as Lucas, the writer-figure who writes, manipulates, and occasionally tortures his own characters, a role once inhabited by Nicco Manalo. Surrounding him are the women ensnared by his self-imposed “quota theory”: Martha Comia‘s Irene, bound to the ghost of a childhood crush that never looked back; Sarah Garcia‘s Sandra, entangled in the moral vertigo of a forbidden bond with her brother; Via Antonio’s Erica, seeking emotional freedom beyond the dull geometry of her small-town life; Maria Alilia “Mosang” Bagio‘s Ester, a widow rediscovering love where grief once lived; and Ava Santos’ Bessie, the untamed muse who provokes and unravels her creator. Rounding out the ensemble are AJ Benoza, Jay Gonzaga, Aldo Vencilao, Divine Aucina, and Vincent Pajara, each rotating through multiple roles from chiseled lovers to meddling parents, enriching the stage with the many faces of love: forbidden, queer, nostalgic, betrayed, and idealized.

A manuscript of flesh and light

The production’s visual grammar astonishes in its precise metaphor. The stage is whitewashed like this vast, unspoiled page and bears etched text fragments; the clothes are inscribed with words, implying the characters’ are drafts in need of revision.  Light becomes language here: crimson floods mark the heat of transgression, amber glows summon the haze of memory, and stark spotlights isolate Lucas whenever the weight of creation threatens to consume him.

The sound design is almost like punctuation: ellipses in quiet, crescendos like exclamation points, shaping the cadence of heartbreak and confrontation. It’s a dramatic setting in which every technical element insists: these are stories unfolding in real time… fragile and changing.

As Lee once wrote in the novel: “Samantalang sa tunay na buhay, ‘pag nangyari, iyon na. Walang revision.” Reality allows no rewrites, but the theatre stages the dangerous illusion that we might edit what has already been lived. An illusion Lucas wields, and one his characters, trembling yet unyielding, strive to undo.

Where the play flourishes

The adaptation’s foremost strength is its emotional intensity. Several critics acknowledged welling up barely minutes into the performance, whilst others touched on the uncanny resonance of watching multiple love tales crumble under a single totalitarian premise. Magallona’s embodiment of Lucas stands at the center of this storm: he alternates between understated despair and abrupt, volcanic rage, grounding the whole production in a raw, human gravity that refuses sentimentality yet bleeds with it.

Comia’s Irene radiates a subdued melancholy… her every movement deliberate, her gaze heavy with the sediment of years spent waiting. In the delicate tremor of her voice and the slight quiver of her frame lies a longing so quietly devastating that it transcends performance, becoming at once intimate and universally recognizable.

Garcia’s Sandra confronts taboo with unflinching ferocity… her body taut, her expressions honed to a cutting precision. She inhabits tension like a second skin, radiating an unease that is at once disturbing and hypnotic, holding the audience captive even in the stillness between her breaths. 

Antonio’s Erica is a revelation, channeling the exhilaration and anxiety of queer awakening through a raw, intimate, and emotionally vulnerable performance; each gesture, each breath, seems to bargain with desire—to test its limits, fear its power, and ultimately surrender to its truth.

Bagio’s Ester emanates a wounded grace all while navigating grief and suppressed longing with minute shifts in posture, timing, and vocal intonation that make each scene traceable of unfathomable emotion.

Santos’ Bessie, by contrast, is a burst of energy: unpredictable, lively, and brimming with charisma, she electrifies the stage and, in turn, challenges Lucas and the other characters with unrelenting zeal.

On the design front, the production garners widespread acclaim. Its minimalist set, word-inscribed costumes, and metatheatrical approach reinforce the novel’s metafictional themes without overshadowing the story. The stage itself becomes a literal book—a concept that might have tipped into gimmickry but instead sharpens the play’s exploration of control, authorship, and rebellion.

As Lee reminds us in another line: “Hindi mo p’wedeng mahalin ang isang tao nang hindi mo minamahal ang hilaga, silangan, timog at kanluran ng kanyang paniniwala.” Love, in other words, demands the embrace of contradictions—a truth the play renders vividly through its fragmented, yet deeply affecting, narratives.

Where the play falters

However, ambition almost always leads to overreach.  The play clocks in at nearly three hours, and while the first half is full of fire, the latter acts, particularly Lucas’ extended engagement with Bessie, might sag under the weight of repetition.  For some audience members, the emotional rhythm stumbles: one narrative soars, while another drifts, feeling more like a marginal note than a fully realized story.

Critics have also pointed out that not all love stories are treated with similar depth.  Sandra’s incestuous longing, case in point, shocks but is rarely investigated beyond the taboo; Erica’s same-sex attraction is delicate but left unexplored.  The female characters, while central, are mostly mediated via Lucas’ gaze.  When they challenge him in metatheatrical asides, the confrontation is both bracing and belated, as if the women are given autonomy only after being denied it.

Finally, the political undertones—the idea of love as rationed, regulated by an external authority—are obvious but not fully mined.  The parable of scarcity resonates with socioeconomic disparities, but the play stops short of probing the metaphor’s full implications, leaving some viewers wanting sharper, more incisive commentary.

Allegory and psychology intertwined

Despite these shortcomings, the showcase excels in its metaphorical and psychological tones.  Lucas is more than a writer; he is patriarchy personified, allocating desire as a bureaucrat does scarce resources.  His female figures represent aspects of his subconscious: Irene as nostalgia, Sandra as repression, Erica as disavowed fluidity, Ester as fear of betrayal, and Bessie as the untamed muse.

In theatre, these characters do more than play their roles; they rebel against them. Their periodic rebellions against Lucas dramatize a larger question: can characters ever escape the scripts forced upon them? Or, translated into the psychological plane: can people ever truly escape the narratives that society, or patriarchy, writes onto their lives?

This echoes Lee’s unseen vision of love: “Ang pag-ibig ay hindi lang laging kasayahan. Kasama nito ang alaala, ang pagkabigo, ang pagnanasa.” Love, he insists, is inseparable from pain, memory, and loss… a truth the play renders both poetic and brutal.

A play worth wrestling with

The stagecraft is not so neat for a binge theatre watch. It sprawls, it provokes, it dares to crash under the heft of its own convictions. But it is this very excess that makes it appealing. The cast delivers performances that cut deep, the design captivates, and the themes compel reckoning.

Yes, it is lengthy; yes, some stories deserve more airtime; yes, Lucas overshadows the women even as they push back. And yet when the curtain falls, one is left with not only the memory of doomed romances but the unease of a greater pondering: is love scarce because life is cruel, or because power makes it so?

Lee himself framed it best when he said: “Sa bawat limang umiibig, isa lang ang magiging maligaya.” The adaptation does not seek to resolve this cruel arithmetic. Instead, it invites us to wrestle with it as allegory, as psychology, as politics, as play.

For audiences who want their theatre tidy and comforting, Para Kay B may somehow disappoint. But for those willing to confront the politics of desire, the psychology of control, and the allegory of scarcity, this adaptation is not your everyday spectacle; it is a stage where love itself is put on trial.