This review is written in the past tense because the magnificent Spill played only three performances last weekend, April 11 and 12, at Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts. Bring it back! Please, bring it back!
This review is also loaded with superlatives because this was the most thrilling and theatrical of any play this season. It was exceptional, terrifically spell-binding, and epic in its human drama.
It arrived a little under the radar, and had it not been for a press release from Steve Fenley, one of the actors in this production and artistic director of Texas Rep Theatre Co., and a nudge from my colleagues, I would have blown this off. What a mistake that would have been.
Written by Leigh Fondakowski, a founding member of Moisés Kaufman’s Tectonic Theater Project (The Laramie Project, Gross Indecency), Spill is a “docu-drama,” a form of playmaking that uses first-person interviews, news broadcasts, and true life experiences to weave the narrative. Think of it as a documentary film on stage. The art, of course, lies in the weaving. There’s drama aplenty in this tale of death and destruction.
Spill is the story of the horrendous explosion, sinking, and ecological disaster that was the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, 50 miles offshore Louisiana, on April 20, 2010. In haste to end its exploration of the Maconda Prospect and move on to the next site, British Petroleum, leased by Transoceanic to find oil reserves, suffered a catastrophic blowout, which instantaneously obliterated 11 workers in the drill shack, ruptured the pipe, and sent billions of gallons of crude bubbling to the surface.
The spill along with immense amounts of methane caused the water to turn into a sea of fire. For 87 days, the underwater spill leaked into the Gulf of Mexico and hastened toward the shore. The environmental impact was enormous, hellish, and would eventually cost BP the largest fine in history for the ecological impact and cleanup.
All this and more – much more – is detailed in Fondakowski’s intriguing drama, steeped with tension and the personal scars to the survivors and the families of the dead.
Directed with unceasing imagination, Weston Twardowski stages the story all over the sleek and contemporary theater at Moody Center – high up on the catwalks, down the aisles, on the rusted stage, and up a ladder. Abetted by theater pro designer Ryan McGettigan, against a huge backdrop, like an Imax screen, were projected swirling ocean currents, TV news broadcasts, or pictures of pelicans draped in oily sludge. All around, we were immersed in tragedy.
The cast was a Who’s Who from the best of Houston theater: Kyle Clark, Juan Sebastian Cruz, Elissa Cueller, Jason Duga, Steven Fenley, Brandon Morgan, Skyler Sinclair and Pamela Vogel. Each playing various characters from execs, riggers, parents, wives, newscasters, all given individual arias to set the scene and lead us inexorably inside the human drama. All were exceptional, with pride of place to Cruz, who delivered a searing portrait of a common blue-collar guy living with wife and babies in a trailer in Louisiana, who decided he had to do something to help. He volunteered to be part of the cleanup army, deploying booms to encircle the spill. BP had dumped toxic chemicals to break up the oil, and Jorey Danos suffered burns and lung damage from the sparkling shards that he described as “broken glass” floating on the water. There wasn’t a sound from the audience as he described his unbearable frustration for his thankless toil and bodily damage. Whether he was later compensated is not mentioned, which made his plight all the more heartbreaking. A magnificent, searing portrait of the average guy as Good Samaritan, who got lost in the shuffle of this ecological disaster.
All technical aspects were top-notch, too, from the booming sound from Robert Leslie Meek, the atmospheric lighting from Jules Houston, and Leah Smith’s detailed costumes of hardhats to dungarees.
Although Fondakowski lays blame squarely on the shoulders of BP’s hapless execs, she’s also fair to those who make their livelihood off oil and gas. This play isn’t a screed, so much as a plea for diligence and safety in dealing with the natural world. Eventually, the well fissure was plugged, and the oil stopped flowing. Life returned to the coast, fishing resumed, as did the drilling. Less than a year after the disaster, after being banned from business and paying an exorbitant fine, BP was back in business in the Gulf. Did they learn their lesson? Have we?
What an exceptional night in the theater. I urge Moody Center to remount this stunning drama. It is a must-see if ever there was one. Staggering and glorious. Dare I say, it blew me away.
