Entertainment

Tepid ‘Water’ pours on the schmaltz

When the curtain drops on “Water by the Spoonful,” the first thing that comes to mind is: This fine but innocuous show won last year’s Pulitzer Prize? Over “Other Desert Cities” and “Sons of the Prophet”?!?

The drama by Quiara Alegría Hudes — a Tony nominee for her “In the Heights” book — sports occasionally engaging writing, and Davis McCallum’s production boasts a fine, tight ensemble. Yet the show’s temperature never rises above lukewarm.

“Water by the Spoonful” is the second in a trilogy that started with 2006’s “Elliot, a Soldier’s Fugue” and will conclude later this year with “The Happiest Song Plays Last.” But the show — about family and connection — easily stands on its own.

Troubled Puerto Rican vet Elliot (Armando Riesco) resurfaces from the first installment, gimpy after his Iraq injury. Hudes splits the action evenly between real life — Elliot deals with the death of the aunt who raised him and some mysterious, iffy Iraq business — and the virtual world of a chat room for recovering crackheads.

Spread among various locales, the addicts forge unlikely bonds. Site administrator Haikumom (Liza Colón-Zayas) warmly monitors her flock from Philly, and gets close to Fountainhead (Bill Heck), a former high-flying tech professional. Logging in from Japan, where she’s looking for her roots, 20-something Orangutan (Sue Jean Kim) has gotten close to middle-aged Chutes & Ladders (Frankie Faison).

In a nice touch, Aaron Rhyne’s evocative projections display the participants’ avatars on the back wall, but still, the chat-room device is clunky — especially if you consider the absurd length of these people’s posts.

Besides, the lack of direct interaction feels flat. When Elliot talks with his cousin Yaz (Zabryna Guevara), a music professor with a passion for John Coltrane and jazz dissonance, their exchanges have a welcome physical weight.

The first half of the show deftly flits back and forth among seemingly unconnected scenes. Hudes is best when letting loose with the recovering druggies, as when Chutes & Ladders taunts Fountainhead: “You sound like the kind of guy who’s read ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ cover to cover. Was one of those habits crack?”

A link emerges, but it leads straight into sentimentality and heavy-handed symbolism. You can try to spruce things up with Internet stuff and still end with melodrama.