Poochwater, the brainchild of actor/writer Mike McPhaden, has the optimistic quality of the post-WWII era in which it’s set combined with some distinctly modern alienation and a dose of sly wit. Written by McPhaden and directed by Patrick Conner, it won the Jury Prize during the Summerworks Festival in its first staging.
The play involves a war veteran who goes to an apartment to return a wallet he’s found. When he tries to write a note, he no longer remembers his name. The owner of the apartment eventually returns and, after initially taking our protagonist for a burglar, helps him rediscover his identity.
From the first glimpse of his round, boyish face peeping in the empty apartment, to the final scene where he leaves through the same door, Mike McPhaden played the nameless vet with skill, treading the line between sweet innocence and dumb naiveté.
Brendan Wall, as the tenant of the apartment, was a little uneven, but made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in consistency. The play itself might also be blamed for this little glitch in an otherwise smooth production. Wall’s character started out as a rough-and-ready everyman, but ended as an eloquent, articulate minister-to-be. The transition was hard to swallow, but Wall carried it off well.
In one of the funniest scenes in the play, the two former enemies are caught in a power outage and discover a common knowledge of Morse code. Unable to communicate in English (they both talk without listening), they manage to break through to each other with dots and dashes. The simple set—a single room with grey brick walls and flimsy furniture—reflects this isolation, as well as the thinly-veiled depression underneath the optimistic veneer of the post-war period.
As relevant as this play is to the period in which it is set, it applies just as much to today, when losing an identity is much easier than finding one. Poochwater is a good 70-minute search.
