Give Me Bucketfuls of Water By the Spoonful!

Water By the Spoonful is good. I mean really good. It has that intense situation kind of aspect with the comfort of humor throughout. And the humor doesn’t detract from the serious nature. Often it magnifies, in a way that I find outrageously satisfying. I can’t really place a finger on it, probably because I haven’t seen a play do this before. This fusion of online and reality, with people speaking their IMs and telling what they are typing. The abstract arrangement of the people makes it easier for me to accept the humor while still waiting for the tension to resolve. And I’m crazy for it.

Take Scene Eight for example. Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders are talking online. The subject is that C&L is going to call his son, trying to repair his relationship. That’s a pretty serious moment. He’s nervous, and he’s using the internet to cope. He’s having Orangutan feed him inspiration and kind of police him. So this internet world is influencing quite directly the real world. Orangutan forces him to make the call, and then he chickens out, and Orangutan refuses to let him quit. But not by saying “No, you owe that boy, call him.” Orangutan actually opens with “How’s little Trebeky doing?”

It is a completely different tactic. Because on the internet we are more humorous, everything is a joke, and it would be very easy to just make his serious situation a joke and move on. But because the play is showing us the real world, and how C&L is struggling with this phone call, physicalizing this event on the other side of the screen, the play forces you to simultaneously consider both. Take in that humor, which gives you space to look a few inches to the left and see C&L hang up on his son as soon as he answers. It is a tiny moment, but it is profound, and there are many like in the play that fuse these two worlds to make something very magical, to me at least.