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The house, by the way, really is gone. Scenic designer Wilson Chin has filled the stage front to back with debris, except for the bare, wooden framework of a wall to which insulation and sheet rock could one day be attached. Theoretically. This second major storm in two years has everyone spooked and most of the Murphys' neighbors decamping for greener pastures (even in New Jersey). Father Marty is intent that he and his wife Mary (Deirdre O'Connell) stay on the coast, among people they know. Son Sal (Quincy Dunn-Baker), a transplant to Manhattan, insists they move for their own safety. Sal's brother, Brian (Tom Pelphrey), has other matters on his mind: He recently finished up a two-year stint in prison brought about because Sal squealed on him. If the boys' disagreement is the most vicious on display, it's hardly the only one. Bubbling just beneath the surface are intimations of problems between Marty and Mary that this disaster has caused, and her not being openly on his side about staying frays nerves still more. Sal, who feels constantly pressured by Mary about having children and is in rocky straits with his own wife, alternately takes charge and takes to the road, trying to make the decisions he sees Marty ignoring when he's not endlessly criticized for doing so. And Brian, trying to resume a normal life, has taken a line-cook job at an Olive Garden, and is trying to rekindle his adolescent romance with the newly divorced girl next door, Emily (Cassie Beck).
If unraveling the truth behind the Murphys is one joy of By the Water, it's hardly the only one. Rothstein's characters are vivid and painfully real, a combination of well-meaning screw-ups, has-beens, never-weres, and still-could-bes that you can probably recognize from your own life. Everyone wants the best for themselves and those closest to them, but don't agree on how to achieve it, and that gives the breezy evening (barely 90 minutes) some serious emotional heft. The arguments that erupt, and the missteps that are revealed, occur not because of how little these people love each other, but how much. And decades of experience with each other have dulled them to all but the sharpest criticisms, actions, and responses. They know each other too well for anything else. Director Hal Brooks adroitly brings this forth, seizing on the tiniest hooks in Rothstein's writing to give us a Murphy family that feels genuinely lived in, if not outright endured at some points. Although the writing is unswervingly honest and strong, if not exactly poetic, for the Murphys, Rothstein has more difficulty crafting their neighbors, the Carters (also Emily's parents): Through no fault of performers Ethan Phillips and Charlotte Maier, who imbue them with the same easy naturalism, Philip and Andrea come across more as vanilla representatives of an aggrieved, unseen community than people whose voices we need to hear to better understand what's being lost. At any rate, the acting is exceptional, with everyone inhabiting their characters so fully you feel as though they've been your lifelong friends, too. O'Connell perhaps scores the greatest success, as Mary must make the longest journey: Her deferential manner toward Marty isn't effective against every offense, and she must discover how to stand up and speak for herself, something that occurs in one of the play's more startling scenes. But Ruginis is just right as Marty: grizzled and gruff, but obviously full of love for those around him, even if it leads him to do bad things (and it does). Dunn-Baker couches Sal's projected sophistication in a down-home shell that makes it clear where he came from; Pelphrey is appropriately hollowed out as Brian and has superb chemistry with Beck, delightful as always in playing a woman unwilling (or unable) to admit how shattered she is. Emily is a major reminder of one of Rothstein's pervasive themes: Sooner or later, everyone has to rebuild, and when your day comes you'd better have the biggest crew possible. By the Water doesn't pretend that reconstructing a house, to say nothing of a life, from the scattered remnants of tragedy is simple. But with her beautiful, understated play, Rothstein also never lets you forget that the alternative—facing the world cold, unsheltered, and alone—is far worse.
By the Water
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