Jake Brasch’s dark comedy has its world premiere at the Denver Center

Tough love is at the heart of Jake Brasch’s new play The Reservoir, now up at the Denver Center in a world premiere for the Denver native. First heard as a reading at the DCPA Theatre Company’s Colorado New Play Summit in 2023, the dark comedy has traveled a long development process to get where it is today.

Mostly, it’s been worth the wait for this production directed by Shelley Butler. Brasch is a gifted young playwright with a keen ear for dialogue and emotional signaling between characters. In this story, he takes on-hiatus NYU student Josh (Phillip Schneider) and sends him back to his family in Denver to deal with a serious alcohol problem. In the opening scene, Josh wakes up on the shore of Cherry Creek Reservoir disheveled, massively hungover and sporting a gash of unknown origin on his forearm.

The script contains familiar beats for this type of character: sobriety, relapse, angry family members who still love him, confusion, hopelessness and perhaps redemption of some sort at the end. What’s unique about it is how Brasch introduces both sets of Josh’s grandparents to serve as coaches, critics and sounding boards while also using them as a lively, moving chorus that rarely leaves the stage.

Listen to the OnStage Colorado Podcast interview with playwright Jake Brasch

It’s a neat device that provides a steady feedback loop for Josh as he flops and flails throughout the play. This well-cast quartet includes Irene (Joyce Cohen) and Hank (Mark Kincaid) plus Bev (Lori Wilner) and Shrimpy (Peter Van Wagner).

Along with whatever wisdom they might dispense, Brasch also draws parallels between the Alzheimer-fueled memory issues his elders are dealing with alongside his own alcohol-induced variety. The result is a bond that creates a mutual — if incomplete — understanding of each other’s situations.

Juxtaposed to these relationships is that of Josh and his single mother, Patricia (a spot-on Vanessa Lock). She’s clearly exhausted with the Josh problem, and he must beg to even by let back in her house. Among other crimes, we learn he’s stolen money from her to fund his habit.

Phillip Brasch as Josh with his Nebraska grandma Iris (Joyce Cohen) in ‘The Reservoir’ | Photo: Jamie Kraus Photography

A wobbly path

While the NYU-Denver connection and alcoholism recovery mirrors Brasch’s own experience, the squishy and largely unsympathetic character of Josh otherwise bears little resemblance to the up-and-coming playwright. Josh is a mess, and like most addicts he also lives in a world almost entirely defined by his own reality with little regard for those around him.

To build this world, Brasch constructed a series of overlapping exchanges between Josh and his mom and grandparents along with outward musings that often include audience asides. It’s an effective way to depict the chaos and voices crowding Josh’s mind, but it’s sometimes unclear to whom he’s speaking. A bit more delineation like a lighting or greater position shift would have helped clear that up.

Another neat choice is to have the grandparents positioned in four chairs upstage, from which they can pop down into the action individually or as a group. Compared to, say, the bed-ridden grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Brasch’s seniors are always on the move. One minute their doing performance theatre depicting a river, the next they’re in a jazzercise class.

It’s a lot of fun, although I was starting to wonder if the device was being over-used when an apparent opportunity for another river moment was halted by one of the grandparents for just that reason. This self-awareness of the play’s own structure surfaces in other spots, creating fourth-wall breaks that add to the show’s appeal.

Rodney Lizcano (left) and Phillip Schneider in ‘The Reservoir’ at the Denver Center. | Photo: Jamie Kraus Photography

Performances

Rounding out the cast is Colorado favorite Rodney Lizcano in a swing role that finds him playing Josh’s co-worker Hugo in his mother’s bookstore, a waiter, a self-help doctor and others. Lizcano is excellent here, gliding in and out of roles and costumes with ease and adding more humor to the already funny show.

Hugo also plays a pivotal role in Josh’s awakening when he learns he has his own trauma. Lizcano nails a moment where Hugo unloads on the useless Josh and lets him know every hour he navel-gazes in the corner means more work for him at the bookstore.

Josh also gets it pretty good from his closest grandparent, Bev — a sharp, highly educated woman who’s immune to her grandson’s need to be forgiven while she tries to help him. It’s a powerful reveal when she informs Josh of her own, long-ago struggles with alcoholism and he sees yet another person close to him who, surprise, also has complex problems to confront. Wilner is tremendous in this role as the takes-no-shit, wisecracking grandma.

Phillip Schneider and Lori Wilner | Photo: Jamie Kraus Photography

Schneider has a lot of work to do portraying the complex, flawed character of Josh while always being on stage. One part of it is creating a spineless man-child who inspires roughly 25 percent sympathy and 75 percent disdain — and he does this well. But some of the more layered sides to the character are less developed as Schneider struggles to modulate his performance. There’s a sameness to his energy level that doesn’t quite fulfill the peaks and valleys to Josh’s reality.

Often, it’s the foils provided by the grandparents who tease out the most interest. Hank is the football-loving Nebraskan who clearly hasn’t much use for his listless grandson. Kincaid develops this character well, making it particularly effective when he shuts Josh out for what he sees as an unforgiveable transgression.

Bringing lots of Jewish humor to the story is Shrimpy, who shocks Josh with frank openness about his own sex life. Who knew people older than 30 knew about gender fluidity? Van Wagner is the life of the party in the role, the kind of character you can’t wait to hear blurt out the next raw laugh line.

As the more traditional sweet granny, Cohen as Iris convincingly reveals to Josh more about her own lived experience than he’d ever considered. It all adds up to a series of unplanned lessons for Josh that help him think outside of himself.

All of the action takes place on a multi-tiered, spare set designed by Takeshi Kata and beautifully lit by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew.

I left opening night of The Reservoir a little disappointed in the overall result while still relishing many of the individual moments and performances. As Brasch’s first professionally produced play, it’s clearly an indicator of great things to come — and the playwright has a number of new works in the pipeline. The Reservoir nevertheless delivers a powerful, ultimately optimistic story about addiction, family and the value of seeing — really seeing — the people closest to you.