Review - Water by the Spoonful

I had been telling our civic duty supervisor that I would need to leave early a couple of days during the term because I already had theater tickets that predated my civic duty summons.  Last Thursday was a crappy civic duty day and I almost didn't get out of there - even after finishing what I thought was the last task, after the predetermined end time of the day, when I was getting ready to leave, the supervisor said there was more work to do.  I was torn, should I stay and complete that day's civic duty?  Or should I leave and see the show I had been looking forward to for months?  The supervisor said I was free to go, if I liked, and with a lot of guilt (and also with relief), I set out for Second Stage. 

In hindsight, it's interesting to me that the last show I saw (The Piano Lesson) was a Pulitzer Prize-winner, and last Thursday's show, Water by the Spoonful, is the most recent Pulitzer Prize-winner.  Excellence in playwriting is always of interest to me, clearly.  I had also heard quite a bit about Water by the Spoonful, even before it won the Pulitzer, so I was eager to check it out.

I found the play to be utterly and completely original, beautifully moving yet funny, and totally wonderful.  That doesn't always happen when you have high expectations going in.  The playwright, Quiara Alegria Hudes, has put together a compelling drama about human connection and accepting responsibility.  Her warmth and accessibility shone through the entire script.  I really loved it.

Water by the Spoonful is the second play in a planned trilogy about the fictional Ortiz family.  I so wish I had seen the first play, Elliot: A Soldier's Fugue, itself a Pulitzer finalist.  And my fingers are crossed that the last play, The Happiest Song Plays Last, makes it to New York soon.  The inhabitants of the Ortiz family's world, and the characters who surround them, are so real and vivid.  Hudes knows these people and lets them breathe and live.  She has such empathy for them, even when they're making bad choices and perhaps moving in a wrong direction.  I rooted for all of these characters to find what they were all so desperately looking for.  I was brought to tears by their intense desire for human connection and the laying down of secret burdens.  I found so much of it desperately relatable.

I thought the construction of the play was quite well executed, with several stories overlapping and vying for attention, yet none seemed to get short shrift.  And the handling of the scenes portraying dialogue in a chat room was very well done.  All of the dialogue, in fact, was spot on and fresh-sounding.  I didn't love the set, but oh well. 

All of the actors were terrific, though I'll admit to a couple of favorites - Sue Jean Kim as a young recovering crack addict looking for her birth parents and Bill Heck as a yuppie crack addict, refusing to admit the depth of his addiction.  Though all of the actors were wonderful and touching, I just found these two performances to be more vivid. 

There was so much wonderful stuff happening in Water by the Spoonful, I wish I had seen it earlier in the run so I could've gone back to see it again.  It's always interesting to me to see a new play again after seeing how everything played out.  I can concentrate on other details so much more the second time.  But such is life.  And as Water by the Spoonful so eloquently reminds us, there's never enough time, so you should grab at your life while you can...