A chat room full of emptiness

The phrase "water by the spoonful" has particular reference in Quiara Alegria Hudes' Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same title, currently at the Arden Theatre. But before I saw it, I imagined it might be about the global water crisis.

Consider the recent chemical tainting of residential water in West Virginia. Consider the drought and raging wildfires in California. Consider that more than 1.2 billion people on Earth now live without a reliable source of fresh water. Then consider that this play is about a bunch of crack addicts who do awful things and are, with the exception of Hudes' recurring character Elliot, utterly boring and unsympathetic.

Hudes is a Philadelphia native who has won considerable admiration and attention. She likes complicated structures: "The Elliot Trilogy" began with Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, and will be completed with The Happiest Song Plays Last, opening in New York next month. Elliot (Armando Batista) in this play is a Marine recently returned from Iraq and haunted by a terrifying battlefield vision of an Arab (Tuhran Cayalak) with whom he struggles nightly.

The fuguelike device here is a chat room for addicts who cheer one another on and up. They recite their online messages while gazing off into space, and, speaking very slowly, say stuff like. "It's never too late to learn" and, "You are in for the fight of your life."

The woman who administers the website is Elliot's mother (Karina Arroyave, who looks much too young for the role). Chatters/addicts include Chutes & Ladders (Brian Anthony Wilson), who stays clean by playing it too safe; Orangutan (Bi Jean Ngo), who is less courageous than she wishes she were; and Fountainhead (Kevin Bergen), a rich hypocrite who learns kindness. Yazmin (Amia Desanti) is the sanctimonious rich white girl who is, in ways I couldn't follow, Elliot's cousin/romantic interest/best friend.

All the chat-room addicts are both angry and self-righteous. Presumably, part of the script's interest for Philadelphia audiences would be the local place references, but mentioning Jefferson Hospital doesn't redeem the play for me.

What with the clichés and the slow talking, director Lucie Tiberghien has her hands full trying to make this play engaging.

Water by

the Spoonful

Through March 16 at Arden Theatre Company, 40 N. Second St.

Tickets $36-$48, $15 teens. 215-922-8900 or www.ardentheatre.org.

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