WET BRAIN By John J. Caswell, Jr
Directed by Dustin Wills
WET BRAIN is a play about addiction and a dysfunctional family.
The father Joe ( Julio Monge) is at the verge of death, poisoned by alcohol, incapacitated, stumbles and has lost the power of speech. He vomits everywhere and uses a few corners in the main room to urinate. He is perhaps an alien too, not so clear though but his children have a vague memory of him taking them to the roof and looking for a star or want to be aducted by aliens.
He has three grown up children, daughter Angelina ( Ceci Fernandez) son, Ron (Frankie J. Alvarez) and Ricky ( Arturo Luis, Soria) Ricky is gay and Ron is an awful homophobe. Ricky has left this horror house to escape to NY and after six years of absence has returned to the family home in Arizona where the sister Angelina is the one who takes care of the father while studying to be a nurse. Ron helps the father more than any one else and is very angry about it and takes it out on Ricky. They are all very abusive towards each other and use extremely vulgar and horrific language. Angelina wants to move out and want Ricky or Ron to be the care takers of the very sick father. Ricky is not ready for that and there is a reference of him being abused the most by his father who was also a homophobe.a homophobe.
They have lost their mother Mona (Florencia Lozano) also. In a brilliantly designed scene in the middle of the play Mona is alive and she and Joe can talk and the siblings confront them.
The play is quite confusing sometime especially about the Aliens coming in and abducting the father, it's all metaphorical perhaps but not very clear. Some funny lines make people laugh but it's more like a horror show with the most tragically dysfunctional family. The siblings also suffer from addictions of various kinds. It's very bold of the playwright to write this play admitting in a note that his family have the histoiry of addiction.
The play is competently directed by Dustin Wills. The set by Kate Noll, sound by Tei Blow and John Gasper and lights by Cha See are most effective. The play is quite disturbing. No one wants to have a family like this one but maybe it's a stark lesson to avoid all kinds of addictions.
REVIEW BY
BINA SHARIF
ATCA
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