MANILA — One year after impressing audiences and critics alike, Tanghalang Pilipino’s award-winning translation of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” is back for another run at the Cultural Center of the Philippines — and it’s more relevant than ever.

“Ang Pag-uusig” retains the play’s original late 1600s setting. But just as Miller used the Salem witch trials as an allegory to the McCarthy communist witch hunt in the 1950s, translator Jerry Respeto used the text as a comment on the spate of extrajudicial killings and the government’s war on drugs.

(Read our review of the original run here.)

Indeed, as theatergoers descend to the Tanghalang Huseng Batute, they are confronted by images of the ongoing war on drugs with photographs of victims plastered on the walls.

The timing of the new run couldn’t have been better with reports on “red-tagging” making the headlines in the past weeks. Miller’s original intent thus rings loudly throughout the blackbox environment of CCP’s experimental theater.

In a talkback during the opening night of the 2018 run, director Dennis Marasigan noted that “The Crucible” is probably the most produced among Miller’s plays, especially in South America, noting that it serves “as a reminder or a warning” about dictatorships.

The play is about how a young manipulative woman, Abigail Williams, convinced the authorities that several people in their town are practicing witchcraft, which is against the law and punishable by death. Together with the other girls, they feign possession and create mass hysteria.

This has created an atmosphere of fear among the townsfolk. Once accused, they have no other option but to admit to a crime they did not commit in order to stay alive. For others, however, like Abigail, this creates an ideal scenario to forward their personal agenda.

For the new run, the play’s relevance to the current Philippine situation was made more glaringly obvious. Certain creative elements were already there in the original but were further highlighted, making this current staging more chilling and powerful. For instance, while the rest of the characters were in Puritan garb, those representing the authority, led by Judge Danforth, are in modern Filipino wear. They also speak using familiar modern slang and current buzzwords.

But for those who caught the original run, another incentive to watch this re-run is the re-shuffling of the actors. While the original cast, led by JV Ibesate as John Proctor and Antonette Go as Abigail Williams, still perform in certain performances, there is a “Cast B” featuring the same actors but in different roles.

For the alternate cast, the male actors performed better, led by an affecting Marco Viana as John Proctor and Ibesate now as the arrogant Danforth. Their “duel” in Act IV is moving and ultimately devastating, and leaves a chilling effect on the viewers.

If you failed to watch “Ang Pag-uusig” last year, don’t miss this opportunity to find out why this was the big winner in last year’s Gawad Buhay awards — regardless of which cast is playing.

“Ang Pag-uusig” runs at the Tanghalang Huseng Batute of the Cultural Center of the Philippines until October 28.