Water by the Spoonful

In the first act of Water by the Spoonful, the magnificent play by Quiara Alegria Hudes, a character of a music professor gives a lecture on free jazz, specifically John Coltrane's "Love Supreme." The inclusion of this scene seems odd, given that it doesn't go with the rest of the plot, but as I was walking back to my car, wondering what I would tell people what this play was about, it hit me--this is the heart of the play. The play is about dissonance.

Don't ask me to explain what dissonance is--I skimmed a long article on Wikipedia and it was full of musical terms that are way over my head--but essentially I took from it that dissonance in music is taking two things that don't seem to go together and putting them together and making it work. Hudes' play, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, has two plot threads that don't seem to have anything to do with each other, and makes them work.

Ostensibly the play is about an extended family of Puerto Ricans living in Philadelphia as they deal with a death in the family. But there's a concurrent plot concerning recovering crack addicts who converse in an online chat room. It isn't until the curtain in Act I that we know how these plots connect, but until then we may say, "huh?" and struggle to understand, bu the payoff in Act II is revelatory.

Elliott (Armando Riesco) is a vet back from Iraq (this is the second play of a trilogy--the first play was called Elliott: A Soldier's Fugue). He is working at a Subway and trying to make it as an actor. His cousin, Yaz (Zabryna Geuvara) is the music professor, divorcing her WASP husband ("they have Quaker Oats in their DNA. They play Pictionary on New Year's!"). When Elliott's mother dies of cancer, they must make funeral arrangements, and Elliott is haunted by a phrase he has translated by a teacher of Arabic.

The chat room scenes are staged interestingly--each character occupies a space on the stage, their avatars projected on screen when they log in, and they speak to each other, but do not interconnect with eye contact--mostly they play to the audience. They are a diverse group--Haiku Mom (Liza Colon-Zayas) is the administrator, a Hispanic woman who is six years clean, Chutes and Ladders (Frankie Faison) is an older black man ("I'm fifty, on a good day...and have the face of a corgi," he says), and Orangutan (Sue Jean Kim) is a hyperactive Japanese woman who was adopted by Americans in Maine, only clean for 90 days. She has gone back to Japan to teach English and is struggling to say sober. They are joined by Fountainhead (Bill Heck), a yuppie who has a crack problem.

The stuff about addiction seems familiar, as there have been countless plays and films about recovery, but I will admit I was fascinated by the nature of community as expressed in the chat room scenes. These people really care about each other--despite their having no idea of their real identities. When Fountainhead attempts to join, he is rebuffed for his arrogance, but eventually he understands and makes a sacrifice for the group.

As for the story of the family, that's equally compelling. Sure, there are some cliches here, too. Characters have secrets, and a dead child pops up (this is where the title comes in--when someone can't keep anything down, even water, feed them a spoonful of water every five minutes), but it's well written and acted, particularly by Riesco, who kind of looks like a guy you would avoid on the street but has amazing depth.

The play was directed by Davis McCallum, and I do have a few gripes. The climax of the play has two foci--one is a character bathing another downstage, while Elliott and Guevara are doing something upstage. From where I sat I couldn't see it. The Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theater is an odd space--it clearly wasn't designed as a theater, as there are huge windows fronting the street that are blocked by curtains. The stage is a deep proscenium. But I hate when a director does not ensure that everyone in the house can see what's going on. I hope to read the script later to fully grasp the ending.

Still, a fine work, highly recommended. Just don't sit on the extreme side of the stage.