THEATER REVIEW: ‘People V Dela Cruz’ — evidence overruled

Are you a bigot? A radicalized, highly political keyboard warrior? A toxic DDS? A kakampink trapped in an echo chamber? A judgmental religious freak?

Welcome to the jury deliberation room of Eldrin Veloso’s imagined “first-ever” Philippine jury system, patterned after the US model but reduced to only six jurors (Mark Aranal, Emlyn Olfindo-Santos, JP Basco, Althea Aruta, Pauline Arejola, Aaron Dioquino, with Rain de Jesus as the Marshal), and staged in an intimate black-box setting for an audience of roughly 30. There is a blank wall for projections. I caught this at the media preview, two days before its official premiere.

Seated around a long, rectangular table, with minimal props consisting of a water dispenser on the left, low bookshelves and a door to the right, are six archetypes you would normally encounter while doomscrolling. These figures are instantly recognizable, almost aggressively familiar.

People v Dela Cruz, Veloso’s sophomore play, is a 60-minute, one-act satirical chamber piece that asks a loaded question: is a severely polarized country ready for a jury system, one that decides the fate of an actual human being?

The case itself is simple. A man is charged with murder after shooting a police officer during a drug raid in the Duterte era. The question is whether this was murder or self-defense.

As theater, the piece is engaging. The pacing is tight. The dialogue grabs attention. Each juror is distinct: the devout older woman, the former mayor, the Gen Z voice, the anti-government student leader, the paralegal-moderator and the tokhang-era traumatized teacher. A goofy marshal cuts through the tension as comic relief, written very deliberately as an idiot.

The characters are entertaining, no question, but they mostly function as ideological placeholders rather than fully lived-in people. They’re recognizable types, sometimes a little too recognizable. Instead of deepening into contradiction, they stay close to stereotype.

There are also head-scratching moments. The religious woman, for example, is explicitly Catholic but is strangely written like an evangelical, constantly citing Bible verses.

Then there’s the teacher, written as the most objective juror. She recounts a tokhang incident involving a former student who was shot by police. She describes a very detailed verbal exchange between the student and the police moments before the shooting. How would she know these specifics? Was she present and within earshot?

Structurally, the play borrows heavily from the 1957 movie Twelve Angry Men, using jury deliberation as a pressure cooker for ideology and human bias. The issue is that it ignores the rule that makes that form work in the first place. In Sidney Lumet’s film, the evidence stays ambiguous. That uncertainty is what justifies the long, messy, emotional debate. Without it, deliberation loses its purpose.

In People v Dela Cruz, that ambiguity is gone. At one point, the jury is arguing over circumstantial evidence, particularly the fingerprints on the gun. Yes, fingerprints invite interpretation. They allow room for bias, assumptions and ideological clash. That’s actually solid ground for a jury drama. But then the play changes the rules.

Toward the end of the story, the jurors agree to review the CCTV footage again, and suddenly the video evidence is shockingly clear. No ambiguity. No doubt. Everything that came before is then rendered unnecessary.

When you drop definitive, direct evidence, the deliberation loses its reason to exist. If the CCTV is that clear, the prolonged ideological arguing that precedes it no longer makes sense, even within the play’s own fictional legal system.

Let’s say that the “reveal” suggests that, for Veloso, the truth was always there and prejudice was the only thing blocking it. That works on a symbolic level, sure. But it starts to strain both legal logic and narrative credibility. In real-world terms, a case with evidence that clear wouldn’t survive prolonged deliberation. In a US-style jury system, it likely wouldn’t even reach trial.

The play also pushes its external stakes hard. We’re shown a media frenzy and mass protests outside the courthouse, treating the case as nationally explosive. Yes, it’s the first jury trial, and that explains attention. But this is also the social media era. CCTV footage doesn’t stay hidden. Once that video is public, the case is effectively over. The play never really accounts for that reality.

Still, it is important to acknowledge what the play accomplishes. People vs. Dela Cruz provokes reflection. It mirrors a society conditioned to judge quickly and harshly, to argue from pain rather than patience. The ensemble chemistry is evident, and the performances elevate the material. In a society still reckoning with judgment — legal, moral and digital — that matters.

The main flaw lies in how Veloso turns the jury deliberation room into a proxy for social-media discourse, forgetting that this space is designed for facts and evidence, not ideological venting. Fiction may bend reality, but once it borrows procedural realism, it still has to play by its rules.

Despite its failures in logic, this sophomore effort shows a playwright with urgency and conviction. What it may need going forward is a more rigorous dramaturgical process, one that aligns form with function as tightly as its intent demands.

People v Dela Cruz plays every weekend until 31 January 2026 at The Corner Studio, 4F, JT Building, Magsaysay Blvd, Sta. Mesa, Manila.