Angelina (Ceci Fernández) bonds with her brother, Ricky (Arturo Luís Soria), in John J. Caswell, Jr.’s Wet Brain.
Memory, when conveyed on stage, traditionally arrives in the form of a flashback, or a soliloquy. But in John J. Caswell, Jr.’s frantic and surreal family drama Wet Brain, memory is a foreign object to be cut from the stomach, or a hypersonic shared experience that blasts through outer space even as it is grounded in that most triggering of locales, the family room in the house of a decidedly dysfunctional brood.
Ron (Alvarez, left) and Ricky (Soria) seek common ground. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
The play’s opposing forces, otherworldly despair versus home sweet home, are the blessing and the curse of this production. The scenarios are far out, but lack a compelling emotional center. The central characters are each a mass of contradictions, somehow caring yet generally unsympathetic. The design team’s Broadway-caliber work is visually stunning, while the playwright’s dialogue too often falls flat.
There are strains of Sam Shepard in the particulars. Like True West, the action is set in the American Southwest and features two brothers, one brutish, the other refined, who fight it out after years apart. And, like Buried Child, there is a drunk, menacing father holding court over dark secrets. If director Dustin Wills fails to whip it all into a Shepard-esque transcendence, he does serve up a unique exploration of how traumatic past experiences can transform into body snatchers.
Drunk is actually too delicate a term to describe Joe (Julio Monge, appropriately terrifying). After a lifetime of vodka-fueled regret, he suffers from Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, otherwise known as “wet brain.” The disease, caused by chronic alcoholism combined with a lack of thiamine, has left him delusional, slobbering, and unable to vocalize much more than primal grunts. For all intents and purposes, he is a brown bear on the edge of death. He roams his dingy, Scottsdale, Ariz., house in a thick fur coat, and when he lunges at his adult daughter and caretaker, Angelina (Ceci Fernández), she rises up like a skilled forest ranger to fight him off. “You have to make yourself bigger than he is,” she instructs.
Siblings Ricky (Soria, left), Ron (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Angelina (Fernández) face rooftop uncertainties.
But at times, the perspective flips, and the audience is suddenly inside Joe’s head, where we find that he is not an animal but the victim of an alien invasion, lost in space, striving to get to the roof of his house where, in better days, he would pal around with his sons Ron (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Ricky (Arturo Luís Soria). Angelina was never allowed up, consigned to spend time with her suicidal mother, Mona. Now, as a grown-up, Angelina is fighting off an eating disorder, as well as the inherited thirst for a drink. On the upside, she is studying to become a nurse and planning to leave the toxic confines of the family abode. She also is convinced that her heart occasionally stops beating, a symptom of “stress-induced arrhythmia.” And she’s the normal one.
Ron, described from the start as a “caveman,” is large and bearded and has homophobic tendencies and a bullying demeanor. But, as Angelina observes, “He’s, like, addicted to Dad.” He makes sure to visit Joe daily, but risks turning into his father if he’s not careful. Ricky is the gay son who flew the coop. Now visiting, for the first time in six years, he is in charge of restoring the home (with the aid of a Roomba) and reestablishing Joe’s insurance policy as he, too, fights off an eating disorder and the urge for a beer or six.
Joe (Julio Monge) is comforted by a familiar face (Florencia Lozano).
When the clan ultimately find their way to the roof, and thus to their past, there are technical moments of pure delight. It begins with designer Kate Noll’s inspired rotating house that affords clever rooftop access. It continues with a sound design (Tei Blow and John Gasper) that puts Joe’s voice in Ron’s mouth as he recalls a father-son moment. And it culminates with a jaw-dropping coup de théâtre that is nearly beyond description, except to say that it lasts a bit too long, allowing the audience to figure out the magic. While up there in this memoryscape, a healthy Joe and still-living Mona (Florencia Lozano) try to ward off the future by giving their kids a gift, or an “implant” as Mona calls it, that gets to the core of this, and indeed every, broken family drama:
An unconscious softening for us in your spirit that might grow over time. And not because we want you to remember us fondly. But because your hatred for us will eat you alive if you don't eventually let it go.
The MCC Theater and Playwrights Horizons co-production of Wet Brain plays through June 25 at Playwrights Horizons (416 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, and at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and information, call (212) 279-4200 or visit playwrightshorizons.org/shows/plays/wet-brain/.
Playwright: John J. Caswell, Jr.
Direction: Dustin Wills
Sets: Kate Noll
Costumes: Haydee Zelideth Antuñano
Lighting: Cha See
Sound: Tei Blow and John Gasper
Projections: Nick Hussong
