A difficult play about addiction, recovery, and the stories people tell about themselves has arrived in Manila for a run that is almost absurdly brief: four performances, across two days, this weekend. The Sandbox Collective’s staged reading of Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places & Things, a winner of two Laurence Olivier Awards, opens August 15 at The Black Box at Proscenium Theater in Rockwell and runs through August 16, with performances at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. The production stars Jake Cuenca, Gabby Padilla, Bela Padilla, Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, and Audie Gemora, with Bela Padilla making her theater debut. That compressed schedule is part of what makes the production interesting. This is not a months-long commercial run designed to ease audiences into a new title. Manila gets four chances to see it. Macmillan’s play follows Emma, an actress whose life has begun to collapse under addiction. After entering rehabilitation, she finds herself forced to confront not only substance dependence but the versions of herself she has built around other people, her work, and the stories she tells …