Orange Flower Water

Kathy (Amy Mathews) and David (Joe Del Re) are married with children, as are Beth (Megan Alston) and Brad (Sebastian Goldspink). David and Beth screw around and everything goes to shit, changing the course of all concerned's lives. That's the gist Orange Lemon Water, though if you're a fan of writers like John Updike or Richard Yates — or you've ever betrayed a spouse — you'd know that there's a lot of uncovered ground in that synopsis.

This is a fairly brief play at 75 minutes. But by half way, I was asking myself whether it would be worthwhile staying through to the end. Why I'd watch this sort of thing. Why devote time to watching a representation of lives falling apart? Of people hurting one another? If that suggests that Chris Wright's story of domestic breakdown is poorly written, it's worth noting that it's not. Orange Flower Water is gorgeously scripted and wrenchingly incisive on topics like desire, guilt, obligation and, most of all, regret. The guy was a writer for Six Feet Under and a lot of that show's better qualities are evident here. There's very little filler and every scene does a good job of examining thoughts typically buried or denied.

It's more a question of what value there is in seeing two people cheat on their partners and the cowardice and loss that unfolds afterwards. Of, at best, the writing being so perceptive that you see yourself in these people. And I think if there's an answer it's something along these lines: everyone wants to be the hero of their life story; to be a good person. But we're all capable of being the lowest worms. You can't write this sort of thing without having lived it, without indicting yourself for having been a less than worthwhile human being. Wright vaguely cops to as much in interviews. And it's maddeningly gratifying to see something well-crafted come out of that. To see the jumbled, unscripted mess of someone's life turned into something that people will pay to watch. It may not be a hoot sitting through this production, but there's something redemptive in being offered the option.