Review: ‘Wet Brain’
Joan Marcus
Wet Brain is a psychological family drama that morphs dysfunction into humor. Making his Playwrights Horizons debut, John J. Caswell, Jr. offers an otherworldly yet semi-autobiographical portrayal of how addiction tears away at the binds of a family. Wet brain, or Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, is a type of dementia caused by a thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency primarily affecting chronic, long-term alcoholics at the final stages of their disease.
A widower, Joe, has succumb to this severe alcoholism, incapacitating him into a nonverbal state with little control over his body. His three children serve as the primary caretakers, but each provide unequal amounts of effort. There is a supernatural presence lurking among the family (at least in Joe’s eyes as he communicates with a yellow light in the sky while the universe glitches around him).
Wet Brain wants to be a contemporary Long Day’s Journey Into Night and the inspiration is there. A family has seemingly given up on one another, standing by as a frail parent feeds an addiction and a ghostly atmosphere bubbles around them. There’s so much that wants to be said, but unlike the O’Neill magnum opus, this play fails to successfully probe a family dynamic. As a result, nothing is said.
Some of the acting is overdone, with yelling and cursing as the default. Even the depiction of homophobia feels almost outdated: very bully-shoves-kid-in-locker-and-steals-lunch-money. Not to say that this type of violence doesn’t occur in real life, but here it appears as an exaggerated caricature stripped of nuance. Bigotry within a family operates differently.
The star here is Katie Noll’s rich scenic design. It’s one of the best I’ve seen in an Off-Broadway space, enhanced by Cha See’s bold lighting and Nicholas Hussong’s flickering projections. The trio produces three distinct locations: interior, exterior, and surreal all with immense detail. This miraculous design steals the entire show, seemingly a distraction to keep audiences from noticing the disconnect between a beautiful picture and a plateaued meaning.
Joan Marcus
In a post-show talkback, the cast revealed which scene Caswell had written first. The objective in the early writing was to create a landscape where a family torn apart by addiction could come together, communicate freely, laugh, and ask questions as if all sense of time and realty was paused. One actor called it “a dinner table scene”. But even this climactic moment, though visually stunning, gets so lost in its bizarre style that it forgets to bring clarity into the family’s complicated history.
Caswell’s script is left unresolved. It’s hard to piece together exactly what happened and ultimately, not much did. Plays don’t require explanation, but they should suggest a sense of purpose. I’m incredibly fascinated by this idea of examining parallels between addiction and abduction (of the extraterrestrial sort), but Wet Brain’s intention is hidden too far out of this world.