Powerhouse production of ‘Water by the Spoonful’ onstage in the Springs

Fine Arts Center delivers with exceptional cast and striking visual effects

Water by the Spoonful is a thoughtfully provocative dive into addiction, recovery, relapse and redemption that will hold you spellbound. Running through March 3 at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, this dark tale is peppered with quirky characters and showcases superb stagecraft with a synergistic ensemble that makes it among FAC’s finest dramatic offerings in recent memory.

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for drama, the play by Quiara Alegría Hudes is set in both the virtual and real worlds of Philadelphia, Puerto Rico, San Diego and Japan where a cadre of sad souls are bonded by addiction in an online support forum.

But there is a live, real-time plot happening as well. Elliot Ortiz, portrayed by Robert Asencio, has returned to Philadelphia after his time with the Marines in Iraq years ago. Wounded with a permanent limp, still struggling with PTSD and an addiction to painkillers, Elliot and his cousin Yazmin (Claire Nolasco) must come to terms with the passing of his beloved aunt who raised him. Strife is steeped in grief as the two have walked very different paths into adulthood.

Act One shifts between the cousins’ contentious histories and the crafty set design of a global foursome in their chatrooms. Stagecraft comes to the fore with the set, lighting, sound and brilliant technical effects. Accolades are due to director Elise Santora and her talented, collaborative creative team. Each discipline takes its turn to masterfully transfix and transport the audience effortlessly as the action shifts between the live to the virtual.

Photo: Isaiah J. Downing

Powerful performances

Asencio nails his portrayal of Elliot with powerful presentation of the dialogue and striking physicality. Hallucinating from flashbacks to Iraq, Elliot struggles with his demons in the form of a slow-motion fight with a ghost (Hossein Forouzandeh) who is a manifestation of Elliot’s first kill. The lights, sounds and techy tricks to this scene are amazing.

Nolasco creates Yazmin subtly with an undercurrent of discontent as the audience leans into her struggles amid a seemingly cushy life as an adjunct college professor. She speaks to the audiences’ collective thought: We are all survivors, degrees of broken, coming to reinvent ourselves and recover from something.

As Elliot and Yazmin navigate their way, the chatroom heats up. Odessa is the leader of the Narcotics Anonymous online message forum, played with perfection by Marlene Montes.This strong actor steps up and into repugnance as an aging crack addict. Montes can chide and then console with credibility. Brash and bossy she aids as much as she agitates her desperate compatriots — and quite the brood they are!

Colton Pratt plays Fountainhead (they all have monikers). Young and handsome, he is affluent, married, a father and addict-in-hiding. He pulls off the fidgets between fixes with snarky lines and over-the-top gestures.

Orangutan (Lilli Hokama) embraces a twenty-something living in Japan on a wild goose chase to find her bio family. She showcases impressive acting chops with muted humor.

Finally, there is the everyman of the addicts, Chutes & Ladders, played with precision by Guiesseppe Jones. Ten years sober but still life seriously lost, he delivers gut-wrenching monologues to portray a man who cannot forgive himself and brave a reconnection with the family he once had. Jones is a powerhouse of an actor.

The four span the globe in their tiny boxes with fast-paced dialogue and razor-sharp delivery. Like a musical quartet, they harmonize in a perfect pitch of dysfunction to create community in shared pain.

Act Two arrives and, gratefully, swiftly aligns the two storylines. Odessa is in fact Elliot’s druggie Mom whom he rediscovers is at her last chance. What could be cornball and disingenuous is real and credible as community proves thicker than blood. They bark and bite, only to retreat and recover before facing their final truths.

Water by the Spoonful reflects the liquidity of lives in struggle — OK, more relatable, the familiar one-day-at-a-time mantra. But the play’s title? You will need to listen carefully as it is but a small exchange of a warm memory amid the turmoil.

So, don’t go expecting to laugh out loud. No getting around that this is heavy stuff. Go. Experience this. Reflect and resonate on this relevant and delicious drama, face it as a slice of life which applies to all of us.