Double Take: Reverse Card & AL.TER Review: A Lesson in Grief, Trauma, and the Echoes They Leave Behind
Coming into this double-feature play, I had no expectations of what was going to happen. I had read the synopsis of AL.TER, but I knew nothing about the story of Reverse Card.
Coming in with an open mind, I was surprised by the messages left by both stories about the LGBTQ+ community and the pains queer people suffer, shown as human stories that anyone can understand.
It is easy to say that being part of the queer community is hard, but it is even harder to show it.
Double Take takes that and, as the cast and crew shared during the press preview, they really decided to show it all.
The pain. The shame. Even the anger that can come from experiencing life as a queer person.
What to Know
Production: Double Take: Reverse Card & AL.TER
Format: A twin bill featuring two queer-centered one-act plays
Presented by: Kho-Lab Productions, in collaboration with Artist Playground
Director: Paul Jake Paule
Run: May 29 to June 21, 2026
Venue: Illumination Studio, 2723 Sabio Street, corner Chino Roces Avenue, Makati
Schedule: Fridays at 8:00 PM; Saturdays and Sundays at 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM
Tickets: PHP 1,500 through Ticket2Me
Reviewed performance: Press preview on May 27, 2026, at 8:00 PM
Press-preview cast:
Reverse Card: Gerald Magallanes and Gerhard Krysstopher
AL.TER: Drei Arias and Johnrey Rivas
Spoiler warning: This review discusses major plot developments and the endings of both plays.
Content note: The production and this review discuss sexual situations, infidelity, grief, bullying, violence, and self-harm.
AL.TER: Grief, Loss, and the Time We Cannot Get Back
Double Take starts the night with AL.TER.
Knowing the synopsis beforehand, I had a small idea of what the story would entail, but I was still shocked by the opening scene.
Immediately, the audience is placed in a situation familiar to some but a new sight for others: a group sexual encounter among men whose identities remain hidden.
The lights are dim. Their faces are unseen. The presence of poppers is part of the hidden world the play shows us, where identities remain concealed even after the deed is done.
Soon after, we meet Al, our main character for this story, coming home from a night of nothing but sweat, bodies, and fluids.
His partner, Terrence, or Ter, sees him arrive and immediately asks him where he came from.
We then cut to Al waking up to an alarm, the kind we all hear in the morning. He tells Ter, who is hugging him, to wake up.
Only for Al to realize that his partner has died.
Ter is no more.
Al is left with all the unspoken words he will never be able to tell him ever again.
In panic and shock, Al tries to sleep it off, as if he could disappear into the darkness that is sleep.
This is the reality for many people with loved ones who suddenly pass away: the regret of unresolved trauma and unsung love. The regret of the things we should have said while we still had the chance.
Not just in death, but also in loss.
Losing contact with the people we love is a kind of grief that everyone experiences.
The childhood friends lost to time. The pet we had forever and eventually lost to age. The college friends and colleagues we once saw often, but slowly stopped finding the time to make plans with.
This feeling is universal.
At some point, we will realize that there are people we may never see again.
Not just because of death, but also because of time.
Time is a valuable prize that we can never earn again, even with all the money in the world.
You can make all the money you want. You could get as healthy as possible and turn into a Greek god that everyone craves.
Yet once the moment has passed, we can never ask for more.
We can never ask for more time.
That is the reality and the honest truth about it.
With time comes loss and every feeling that comes together with it.
That is grief: our response to losing something important.
And is there anything more important than time?
The Same Word, Different Font
The story of Al continues with him being woken up by the floor manager of a department store where he had fallen asleep.
This is the same department store where he and Ter first met.
As Al walks around, he suddenly sees Ter alive and walking.
The same build.
The same face.
The same style.
Everything about him looks the same.
Yet he is another person.
The stranger introduces himself and, to Al’s surprise, even has the same name.
Ter is there.
He is right there.
Al thinks he is dreaming again, but this time, it is reality.
The same body, but inside is a different person.
A different human being who looks exactly the same.
The same word, different font.
The same artist, different album.
The same dish, different ingredients.
A complete impossibility, but somehow a reality at the same time.
How could we meet the same person twice?
That idea itself is both flawed and honest.
When you run into someone again after time has passed, they may still look like the person you once knew. But they have also gone through different experiences along the way. They have grown into different people.
People change.
As they say, change is good.
Change is growth.
And sometimes, with growth comes the grief of grief itself.
Grief is always seen as something bad, but we do not always realize that grief is also our way of responding to lessons.
Life lessons that will forever change and shape the way we move forward.
Saying the Words That Came Too Late
Al takes the chance to talk to Ter again.
He asks this stranger to act as a body so that he can speak to Ter one last time.
An impossibility has walked through the same doors that gave him the chance to meet Ter in the first place.
This becomes Al’s miracle.
A chance to tell Ter all the things he wanted to say before he died.
All the words that came too late, after he realized that the person he loved had died peacefully while holding him in his sleep.
This new Ter is surprised to hear the story of the other Ter, but he accepts Al’s request with grace.
Al takes the opportunity to find his peace.
He explains why he did what he did.
Why he went behind Ter’s back.
Why he had an alter account.
Why he took their love for granted.
Al asks for Ter’s forgiveness and for the strength to move forward in life.
How could he move on, knowing he had lost the love of his life the night after betraying him?
Through the stranger in front of him, Ter’s ghost and spirit comfort Al.
If Ter had known that he was going to die that night, he says, he still would have chosen to lie down next to Al.
He would have stayed awake for as long as he could.
Ter really did love Al until the end.
Until the very end, love was shown to Al, even if he did not fully understand it at the time.
Finally, Al realizes that it is time.
Time for him to let go of Ter.
And we mean literally, because the new Ter’s wife arrives and he has to leave.
Al voluntarily and lovingly lets him go.
Both the man he is holding in his arms and the man he has been holding at the bottom of his heart.
There is no love in lies.
Later, after Al sits down, the same floor manager from earlier warns him about sitting on the furniture.
Al takes the opportunity to flirt with him.
To his surprise, it works.
But this time, Al asks whether the manager has a partner.
When he notices the ring on the man’s finger, he backs away.
Al is learning to move smarter.
There is no love in lies.
Only regret.
AL.TER is a story of grief and loss, something you cannot show without love and time.
How grief echoes out through time.
How you cannot have loss without love.
How these stories do not just happen to you and me, but to everyone we know.
And how the stories we experience shape us into the people we are now.
Reverse Card: Trauma That Refuses to Stay in the Past
Double Take moves forward with Marvin walking into the same showroom, bringing us into the next story of the night: Reverse Card.
If AL.TER shows us grief, Reverse Card shows us trauma.
How trauma can manifest in disgusting and disturbing ways.
The play starts inside a dimly lit home.
Marvin has just come from the department store and is preparing for someone to arrive.
He takes his clothes off, takes a shower, changes into something nice, and prepares the house.
Like any other person would.
This shows us that Marvin is human, much like anyone in the world.
Weak to pressure.
Weak to the struggles of life.
Weak to the human part that is the mind.
Then a loud knock comes from the door.
His former bully and now colleague, John, arrives from the pouring rain.
Marvin welcomes him inside and offers him a towel and drinks for the inconvenience.
We are surprised to find out that they are there to hook up, or, as they call it, have “a high-school reunion.”
The Pain Behind the Joke
What follows is a night of recalling old memories.
The times John used to bully and beat Marvin for being a weakling and an easy target in high school.
Much like how people sometimes talk about the dramas that happened in the past, only to laugh them off as if they never happened or as if they had already moved on from them.
Yet that is the kicker.
Trauma does not forget.
It lingers like a scar.
Even after the wound has healed, it leaves behind a painful reminder that the past happened and is something we still have to remember and learn from.
Marvin and John continue talking about where they have ended up.
Both are now writers in the world of theater.
Marvin lives alone in a large home inherited from his late parents.
John has a wife and two children.
Their paths have gone in different directions, only to collide once more.
In the middle of it all, Marvin tells John that he based one of the characters in his play on him.
A masculine man who bullied his way through life and got to where he was because he was confident, handsome, and likable.
Meanwhile, the main character of Marvin’s story is weak and someone people can push around, much like how it was for Marvin in high school.
With John in the room, Marvin asks if they can read lines from the play together.
John initially declines.
Marvin tells him that he has cancer, only to laugh it off as a joke.
Eventually, John agrees to read.
As an actor, he puts his all into the script.
What follows is a dramatic exchange of lines, with Marvin slowly moving from the fake play into real anger.
John, already intoxicated from the drinks Marvin has served him, calls the story weak and unrelatable.
He dismisses it as a story of self-victimization.
Marvin tells John that he only feels that way because he cannot relate.
John was the villain in the story.
This is our first real sense of the trauma from the past coming back to haunt both of them.
Marvin is finally getting the chance to say the words he always wanted to say.
Words about John.
The man he was and the man he may still be today.
A Home Filled With What Remains
John asks Marvin how he reached this point in life, owning a home and living alone.
Marvin explains that his mother died of a stroke.
His father, whom John reminds him of, died of a heart attack.
His brother moved away to begin a family of his own.
Inside the bedroom, Marvin shows John his father’s urn.
Even if his father has passed, he is still there in the house, lingering like a spirit.
A reminder of the family Marvin once had.
Later, Marvin receives a phone call from his doctor.
Trying to keep it hidden from John, he moves into the bedroom and closes the door.
But John listens.
He realizes that Marvin’s joke was real.
Marvin really does have cancer.
He really is dying.
His script may be his final chance to leave something behind.
John asks about the medication the doctor prescribed.
Marvin says that he has been taking it, although he sometimes forgets because there is so much on his plate with the play and everything else.
They return to the past once again.
Marvin reminds John of how he was kicked out of high school after John blamed him for something that was actually John’s fault.
Marvin tells him that he would not be the person he is today if it were not for him.
John’s actions shaped Marvin’s life more than he could ever know.
Then the night begins to change.
The Reverse Card
John asks to use the bathroom.
While he is away, Marvin secretly moves a knife from the kitchen into the bedroom and hides it underneath the bed.
He also slips something into the bottle of water they have been drinking from.
Later, both men receive phone calls.
Marvin pretends to answer his own call but uses the moment as an opportunity to listen to John’s conversation.
He learns that the script he had been writing has already been rejected because a director chose John’s script instead.
That becomes the final push.
Marvin gives John a glass of water, telling him that he has already had enough alcohol and should sober up.
John drinks it.
Soon after, John says he has to leave because of an emergency.
Marvin asks him to stay longer, reminding him that they still have not hooked up.
But John says he has to go.
Then he realizes that the door is locked from the inside.
John begins to panic.
The medication mixed into his drink starts to take effect.
As John slowly loses consciousness, Marvin reveals that he never invited him over for a hookup.
It was about revenge.
All the pain.
All the trauma.
All the history that John had put him through.
When John collapses, Marvin retrieves the knife from underneath the bed.
He places it into John’s unconscious hand before taking his own life.
The scene shows how trauma can manifest in disturbing ways.
By staging his death this way, Marvin leaves John to carry his death.
“You didn’t hold my TRUTH, now you’ll carry my death.”
These are the words left on the door of Marvin’s bedroom.
The Cost of Taking Back the Story
Reverse Card is a story of how the past can come back to haunt us even when we think it has already passed.
Even when we debrief.
Even when we think we have already processed the things that hurt us.
The pain can still echo.
It can still leave us with trauma.
AL.TER teaches us that moving on does not always mean forgetting, but rather accepting that the past has happened to us.
Reverse Card, instead, takes the pain and embraces it in a way that is unwell and unprocessed.
Marvin does not let go.
He turns the pain into a weapon.
That is the idea behind the reverse card.
For most of Marvin’s life, John had the power.
John was the bully.
John was the bigger man.
John was in control.
But this time, inside Marvin’s house, John realizes that he is no longer in control.
He is the one manipulated into an exposed position of weakness.
He becomes trapped inside Marvin’s story.
The twist forces us to ask uncomfortable questions.
What if I finally take back the narrative and show my story?
What if I become the hero of my story?
What happens when becoming the “good guy” in your own story means turning someone else into the villain forever?
Nothing Left Off the Table
Double Take ended with a Q&A featuring the cast and creative team, who shared their experiences of making the stories we had just seen.
One question stayed with me.
Was there ever a moment when you felt like you had to hold back from telling the full story?
The team’s answer was clear.
Nothing was left off the table.
Everything they did was intentional.
They wanted to tell the truth of these stories, choosing to skip over the idea of restraint.
That matters.
Restraint that, for a time, many queer people have lived with.
Holding back.
Hiding parts of ourselves.
Learning to be yourself and showing the world your pride.
Your pride that who you are is beautiful.
Even through the ugliness of it all.
Still beautiful.