While I can't re-publish my review for AHEB (yet?), I can probably talk about the differences between the run I reviewed (2018) and the run on YouTube right now (2019).

Spoilers in the rest of the thread, and trigger warning: rape.

Back in 2018, my biggest issue with the play was the rape of Joy being the pivotal moment in the male leads' narrative. It was a 3-hour long fridging story; Joy was a female character who existed solely to die for a male's personal development.

The 2019 run received praise for "fixing" this issue by supposedly giving Joy more agency, but what we got onstage was a smokescreen. It expanded Joy's role, but only to make her fridging less apparent.

Novenario and Quintos, with all due respect, didn't understand the issue.

(Dingdong Novenario is AHEB's playwright, while Floy Quintos is credited as the 2019 run's dramaturg)

What made AHEB problematic as a rape narrative wasn't because Joy wasn't given much to do post-rape in the original script. It's that her rape was a supporting detail in the story of three men. To fix the play, they needed to overhaul its central focus. And they didn't.

The expansion of Joy's role attempted to make her less of a silent victim. Unlike in the 2018 run, 2019's Joy had her more defiantly confront Banlaoi--who, I might add, was only weakly implied to be involved in her death in the original run. Joy was more fully fleshed out.

But at the end of the day, it's still not *her* story. You can expand her role all you want, but the show's framing device puts Hector's, Emman's, and Anthony's narrative at the forefront. Without changing that, Joy's Act 2 plotline is nothing more than an extended sidestory.

We see her confront Banlaoi. We see her fight for a better life. We see her try to regain her agency.

But none of it has any bearing on the main narrative. Nothing Joy does directly impacts the lives of the three characters AHEB wants us to follow.

Nothing, except her death.

In some ways, this actually makes 2019's AHEB *worse* than 2018, because it's narratively jarring to have Act 2 rush through Hector, Emman, and Anthony's plotlines in a weak attempt to rectify earlier writing sins. It makes us care less about the main characters.

After spending all of Act 1 telling us about these three, Act 2 breezes through a decade's worth of backstory and expects us to sympathize with them despite the protraction. The 2018 run at least had them agonizing over the guilt they felt for their inaction RE: Joy's rape.

2018, as problematic as it was, made us really feel how the guilt impacted their lives. Hector could no longer commit to relationships because he couldn't trust himself after failing Joy. Anthony punished himself by staying in the closet. Emman distracted himself with work.

The 2019 rework, by stripping all that down to a single chaotic medley, effectively makes the leads even more callous and selfish. We don't get the chance to get into their heads.

And because we aren't given the chance to understand them, they end up just being assholes.

I'm not saying either run was better than the other. They're about equal in terms of writing; they both just didn't get it.

Novenario and Quintos weren't well-equipped to tell a rape story, which is a shame because there has always been so much talent in the show itself.

In 2018, one of the actors actually asked me what could have made it better. At the time, I could only offer one solution: Make Joy the lead. If you're going to have a female character raped, have the decency to make it *her* story. Don't make it a tool for someone else's growth.

Now, I realize, there *is* a way to keep the narrative centered around Hector, Emman, and Anthony. Not the best way, mind you, but no less real.

It's simple: Keep the rape at the center of their story.

Neither the 2018 nor 2019 run did that.

Both versions treated the rape as a "what" than a "why" (but moreso in the 2019 run). "What" because it feels like a thing that happened in their past.

Making it a "why"--something we witness continually shaping their lives--turns their failure into the scar it should be.

By doubling down on the guilt and how it affected their lives since, we give them the opportunity for regret, reflection, growth, and redemption.

What they needed was a reason to earn that closing number. Without that journey, it's just a macabre callback to their friend's rape.

Again, my opinion still is that the best way to fix AHEB is to make Joy the lead, and the boys the supporting cast.

But if you absolutely MUST keep them in the narrative front, they need to be completely broken as individuals because of their inaction.

In both versions of the show, for instance, the most apparent motivation in Hector's plotline is that he never got to tell Joy he loved her. That is absolutely selfish.

But shift that to him never telling her he loved her because he failed her after her rape? That's real.

"I'm sorry I failed you. I can never tell you I love you because I did nothing about your rape," is much more sympathetic than, "I'm sorry I never got to tell you I loved you, even after your rape."

It treats Joy's rape with proper weight. Anything less is distasteful.

Instead, what we got was the latter, followed by a macabre callback to her rape as a show-stopping closing number, trying to create beauty out of an objectively atrocious moment in their lives. What AHEB dangerously implies is that rape can be looked at with rose-tinted glasses.

No. Just NO.

Anyway, that's all. In spite of my outspoken distaste for the script, I really wanted a version of AHEB to be good. There is immense talent in the show, and they deserve all the good things.

Among those good things, what they deserve most are better writers. Sigh.

Last: How I would've addressed the fridging in the original run--Have the three reconnect with Joy in adulthood. Have them make amends. Have them grow through their interactions with her. And THEN have Banlaoi kill her.

That would've actually made the song hit harder at the end.