Wet Brain NYC Reviews and Tickets
About the Show
Production Covid-19 Safety ProtocolsShow-Score Member Reviews (112)
See it if You like quick-moving, highly engaging, and meaningful works. The show is harrowing and painful, sublime in making its conclusions.
Don't see it if You prefer light, easy entertainment. Wet Brain is complex and you need to pay constant active attention to fully embrace its concepts.
See it if You're willing to stick with a show to see where it goes...everything including maybe aliens!
Don't see it if You're impatient or don't like sensitive situations (substance abuse, death, aliens!) Read more
See it if you want to watch a very ambitious off broadway staging of a very dare I say avant-garde play.
Don't see it if you want more emotional connection to the characters. The sets were amazing but the story lacked heart.
See it if you like a family drama that offers a gripping look at addiction, parents’ poisonous behaviors, children’s obligation, sibling relations…
Don't see it if you don’t like surrealism. The part about the father’s hallucinatory brain is otherworldly like “Life of Pi” and has a sci-fi feeling.
See it if you want a deeply honest play about family trauma and not over the top. The scenic design in this play is epic! Big surprise towards the end
Don't see it if you want a lighthearted musical where you can laugh, or you could be triggered by the topic.
See it if you want to see a unique, hilarious, well directed, acted and staged show about the tragedy of addiction.
Don't see it if any of the many triggers mentioned in the show description will bother you. There are many Read more
See it if you are really looking for a thrilling, provocative, and smart dramatic work.
Don't see it if you are extremely triggered by self-harm and/or addiciton.
See it if You are like me and you love family dramas with very flawed characters
Don't see it if You will be bothered that the overall story is a bit unrealistic Read more
Critic Reviews (15)
CRITIC’S PICK:"This is a horror show, unequivocally. But John J. Caswell Jr.’s 'Wet Brain,' at Playwrights Horizons, is also a very funny, pitch-black comedy about addiction and obligation, love and abandonment, and patterns of poisonous behavior lodged so deep they seem encoded."
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"The play lacks a clear takeaway; rather, it offers up an examination of love and loss...They probe the truth of how mental illness and addiction trickled into their generation, and, by the end, they look for a way to fix the leaky faucet."
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"This is a play that’s comfortable leaving a lot of gaping wounds bleeding while still being quite funny...I won’t spoil what’s coming, nor could I attempt to explain it, but it all provides a way for the play to reach out beyond the patterns these characters are trapped in, and see something hopeful out there in the stars."
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"...'Wet Brain' might be an imperfect play, it has vital lessons to offer us and is a compelling portrait of dysfunction."
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It turns trauma into spectacle, leaving its characters sadly underdeveloped. Kate Noll's astonishing eleventh-hour scenic coup -- an overhead, ultra-forced-perspective view of the family room -- and the eerily effective combination of Nick Hussong's projections and Tei Blow and John Gasper's sound design are far more vivid than anything in Caswell's script, despite its studiedly provocative manner. The trouble with Wet Brain is that it accumulates lists of traumas but never explores or resolves them. As a result, the family's tormented backstory never comes into focus.
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“Caswell seems to have some strange astral insights in mind about dynamics in fractured families...and dialogue that often strays from basic noun-verb construction, those insights just didn't come through for me. Dustin Wills, the director, seems more interested in arresting stage pictures then explaining what they mean.”
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“This very dry-brain accomplishment adds up to an early nominee for the year’s Best Set, with ‘Wet Brain’ getting an early start for the year’s Best Dysfunction Family Play.”
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Caswell’s dialogue for and wry observation of a family this dysfunctional is quite compelling. Scenes where two of the siblings verbally gang up on the third are fraught with humor as much as real-life situations. Communication is “at your own risk,” with each goading the other about their addictions, instigating full-on relapses at every turn. It is no secret this is a very personal piece for the author. The dedication to the play reads: ”For my father if he’s out there. And for my siblings.” It is a play as much about love and loss (and grief) as it is about the addictions that create chasms in a family. And it is a play that deep down reveals a family with a lot of heart.
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