Josh (Jake Horowitz)—a queer, alcoholic, and very erudite NYU college student—has passed out on the beach again. Upon coming to, he thinks he’s on the Atlantic, but soon realizes he’s back home in Colorado. Except he has no memory of how he got there. A muscular park ranger in shorts (Adrián González, in one of many roles) stops by to ask after his well being and remind him that sleeping on the beach is not recommended. Josh marvels, “Hot cop just called me son.”
Josh is a version of his creator, playwright Jake Brasch, and the central character of Brasch’s new play THE RESERVOIR. Told retrospectively after years of sobriety, Brasch revisits the benders, blackouts, hangovers, 12-step meetings, and relapses that marked his college years in a narrative where guilt and pain are way stations en route to laughter and lessons learned.
Kicked out of his sober living house and making ends meet by working at the local bookstore, Josh has not exactly been welcomed home by Mom (Marin Hinkle, who also plays an AA meeting attendee, and a self-help-for-addicts author who urges her readers to eschew the “steps” for the escalator). In an attempt to get out of his own way and rediscover some semblance of productivity, Josh embeds himself in the lives of his four grandparents, all of whom live nearby. Reading up on maintaining “cognitive reserves” as a means to forestall the effects of the Alzheimer’s disease he is shocked to discover his grandmother Irene (Carolyn Magnini) is afflicted with, Josh institutes a group practice of simple memory games and prodigious spinach intake. But all of this busy activity is but a distraction, and by the end of Act 1, Josh’s assumption that “abstinence” is the same as “sobriety” proves catastrophic.
Discovering the difference between these two concepts informs Josh’s recovery during the play’s second act, and he is helped immensely by the experience and tough love of his other grandmother, Beverly (Liz Larsen), an f-bomb-dropping scene stealer. It’s rare that an addiction drama leans as hard into comedy as THE RESERVOIR does, but Brasch wanted a play that was more of a celebration than a commiseration. If the work could use some cuts and tightening, its value is evident and the lessons remain true: the fear of irrevocably alienating a loved one is a sure-fire way to stay sober, and being the star of one’s own life is—for some—a potentially fatal condition.
THE RESERVOIR is a world premiere production of the Geffen Playhouse, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and the Alliance Theatre. See info and links below for details.
THE RESERVOIR
Written by Jake Brasch
Directed by Shelley Butler
Through July 20
Gil Cates Theater at Geffen Playhouse
10886 Le Conte Avenue, Westwood, Los Angeles
geffenplayhouse.org/the-reservoir/
Jake Brasch, The Reservoir, June 18–July 20, 2025, Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles, from top: Jake Horowitz; Horowitz, Carolyn Mignini, Adrián González, and Geoffrey Wade; Marin Hinkle and Horowitz; Horowitz and Liz Larsen; Lee Wilkof, Larsen, González (foreground), and Wade; Wilkof, Mignini, Horowitz, Wade, and Larsen.
Photos by Jeff Lorch, courtesy the Geffen Playhouse.
