In the final moments of Water by the Spoonful, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Quiara Alegría Hudes, Elliot, a veteran of the Iraq war, stands in a Puerto Rican rain forest. He’s about to spread the ashes of his aunt, the woman who raised him after his crack-addicted mother surrendered custody. Then he gets a text message: Elliot’s father has sold his house.
This dramatic inertia is even more pronounced in a parallel story line involving a second set of characters, a quartet of recovering addicts who communicate with each other through an Internet forum for “crackheads.” Here Hudes essentially gives us four people yakking about how difficult it is to quit and what encourages them to keep trying. And when she does try to concoct some dramatic action—as when one of them, a Japanese-American woman adrift on a visit to Japan, admits to an infatuation with another and urges him to come visit her, forcing him to confront his own isolation—it feels expedient and underdeveloped.
Through 4/6, Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 PM and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PM and 7:30 PM Court Theatre 5535 S. Ellis 773-753-4472courttheatre.org $65
