By Charlene Baldridge | Downtown News
Whether they realize it or not San Diego audiences may have experienced the work of Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes at least twice. Hudes’s play “Elliot: a Soldier’s Fugue” was produced in its West Coast premiere by ion theatre company in 2010, and Hudes wrote the book for the Tony Award-winning musical “In the Heights,” seen here at San Diego Repertory Theatre and earlier in its Broadway tour, presented by Broadway San Diego at the Civic Theatre.
Currently, Hudes’s 2012 Pulitzer-winning play, “Water by the Spoonful,” may be seen through May 11 at the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, produced by the Old Globe. “Water by the Spoonful” is the middle part of the playwright’s trilogy concerning Elliot Ortiz, a veteran of the Iraq war and member of a family with origins in Puerto Rico.
Elliot’s adoptive mother, Ginny, a nurse during in the Vietnam War, was introduced in “Elliot,” along with Elliot’s father, a veteran of that war, and Elliot’s grandfather, who fought in the Korean War.
When “Water by the Spoonful” begins, the unseen Ginny is dying. The play is set in 2009, six years after Elliot’s original deployment. He still suffers from a serious leg wound and possibly from PTSD and addiction to painkillers. Unable to get on with his life, he works making sandwiches at Subway, lives with Ginny and hangs out with his cousin Yazmin (Sarah Nina Hayon), an intelligent, high-powered attorney academic and composer.
A separate plot line threads its way among Elliot and Yazmin’s scenes. Elliot’s birth mother Odessa Ortiz (Marilyn Torres), who uses the screen name Haikumom, runs an online support group for other cocaine addicts in various stages of recovery. Their sobriety ranges from one day to many days. All are hanging in, dependent upon one another’s cyberspace presence. Among them are Fountainhead (Robert Eli), a businessman on the downward spiral to losing his company and his family, and Orangutan (Ruibo Qian), a Japanese immigrant who is sweet on Chutes&Ladders (Keith Randolph Smith). With the possible exception of Haikumom, none of them has met the others face to face.
When Fountainhead receives unkind criticism from Chutes&Ladders, for instance, Haikumom meets Fountainhead face to face, armed with brochures from a number of recovery facilities, trying to convince him he needs treatment.
Elliot says, “Our family may have been fucked up but at least we had someplace to go.” He does not approve of Odessa’s online home and her family of addicts. When it comes time to pay for Ginny’s cremation and flowers for the memorial service, Elliot berates Odessa unmercifully for her lack of ability to contribute monetarily.
M. Keala Milles, Jr., plays several roles, most chilling of which is the ghost of Elliot’s first kill in Iraq. In fact, everyone in Hudes’s play is haunted in some way. We discover the ways they have betrayed themselves and others as they expose their pain and human need for love and connection.
Initially, the play requires much of us, but once we’re hip to its jazz-inflected rhythms and riffs, its complexity is a joyous challenge. Directed by Edward Torres, the Globe’s acting company is magnificent; each character has a backstory fathoms deep. We already know Elliot’s. Even the wisest and proudest among them falls from grace and because of the respect accorded them by the playwright, we identify with their failures, struggles and triumphs. And lest you think oh, how bleak, we laugh a lot too. These people are treasures.
Ralph Funicello’s fiber optic inspired set it wondrous, too, especially as lighted by Jesse Klug and infused with Mikhail Fiksel’s Coltrane inspired sound design. David Israel Raynoso is the costume designer.
“Water by the Spoonful” plays Tuesdays through Sundays in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, Conrad Prebys Theatre Center, Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego. Tickets $39 and up www.theoldglobe.org or (619) 23-GLOBE.
