Real Families Really Matter in “The Reservoir” and “You Got Older”

Ever since Sophocles put the fall of the House of Oedipus onstage, the theatrical canon has been chock-a-block with unhappy families. And that makes sense because they make for good drama. But despite the failings they may have, few real families are so totally dysfunctional and so I found it refreshing to see two recent shows centering their stories around the kinds of supportive—even if flawed—families that most of have or are struggling to create.

Josh, the central character in The Reservoir, a new dramedy by the young playwright Jake Brasch that’s now playing at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater, is a mess. Even though he’s only 20, Josh has been in and out of rehab for years and was recently kicked out of NYU. When the play opens, he’s just coming out of a bender and, as he explains to the audience, he has no memory of how he’s ended up sprawled alongside the titular waterway back in his hometown of Denver. 

His mom is so fed up with Josh that she requires him to take a Breathalyzer test before she’ll let him into the house. So Josh turns to his grandparents for emotional support. But they’re by no means perfect. His sweet cookie-baking grandmother Irene is an evangelical who’s uneasy with the fact that Josh is gay; and her husband Hank is trying to cope with Irene’s descent into dementia by downing beers and watching junk TV. 

On the other side are Josh’s Jewish grandfather Shrimpy, who is working hard to fend off the ravages of aging by acting younger than he is, including preparing for a second bar mitzvah. And finishing up the quartet is Shrimpy’s long divorced wife Bev, a retired career woman who takes pride in being the cool grandparent but who is guarding some secrets of her own. What unites all four is their love for Josh and their desire to help him stay sober.

Now I know much of this sounds grim but Brasch, aided by Shelley Butler’s simple but buoyant staging, interlaces the serious themes of alcoholism and dementia with humor that is alternately heartwarming and laugh-out-loud funny. 

It would have been easy for the grandparents to disappear into old-people clichés as so often happens but here they are played by some of the best older actors in the business, with Mary Beth Peil as Irene, Peter Maloney as Hank, Chip Zien as Shrimpy and most especially Caroline Aaron as Bev, all investing their characters with a precise admixture of fortitude and vulnerability,  Meanwhile, Heidi Armbruster and Matthew Saldívar are just as good in a variety of smaller supporting roles. 

But this is Josh’s play and Noah Galvin channels all of his own affability into portraying a guy who knows that he can get by on his charm but who is also frightened that he may have little more than that to offer. The ending isn’t entirely happy but there’s great satisfaction in watching as both Josh and his grandparents benefit from leaning on and propping up one another.

Mae, the main character in the revival of Clare Barron’s You Got Older, which opened this week at the Cherry Lane Theatre, goes through a similar experience. After her life crumbles—a bad affair results in her losing her married boyfriend, her job at a law firm and her apartment—Mae also finds herself returning home, in this case to Washington State. And she too finds an ailing relative, her widowed father who has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.

I didn’t see the Obie-winning original production of this play that ran at HERE Arts Center in 2014 and helped to establish Barron as an exciting and distinctive voice in the American theater but the unique mix of You Got Older’s dark humor and genuine open-heartedness make clear what that initial fuss was all about. 

In her 30s, Mae is older than The Reservoir’s Josh and she isn’t as troubled as he is but she’s still struggling to move ahead. And her futile coping mechanisms from making up erotic S&M fantasies—which play out on stage—to hooking up with an oddball former schoolmate she barely remembers aren’t working. 

Instead what sustains her are the laconic conversations she has with her dad (here played by the always terrific Peter Friedman) and the amusingly banal exchanges traded with her three siblings as they all gather around their father’s hospital bed.

Alia Shawkat’s performance as Mae didn't grab me at first (click here to read more about the actor who is making her stage debut in this play) but the more I thought about it and about Anne Kauffman’s overall shrewd direction the more their deadpan approach seemed to accurately and viscerally evoke the numbness that so often creeps in when life beats us up. 

I suspect that what makes The Reservoir and You Got Older work so well is that their playwrights are drawing directly from their own life experiences. In their Playbill bio, Brasch, who is in recovery, dedicates the play to their “Grandma B.” and in earlier interviews, Barron has said she wrote her play while going through a medical crisis with her own dad. Both their plays are bearing testament to the existence of functional families—onstage and off—and the power of that unconditional love.