Hello yall. Here’s my review of “Can’t Drink Saltwater”. 

Written by Kendra Mylnechuck Potter and directed by Meghan Finn, this show has a lot going on. It’s about a grieving indigenous mother trying to find her daughter Star. It’s about a young progressive woman named Jen trying to help with a Christian women’s shelter. And it’s about a survivor of abuse named Vic trying to keep sobriety and her own identity. It is about how America’s systems of authority and protection claim to have good intentions but are only reliable in how consistently they fail society’s most vulnerable, leaving us to question whether their intentions were good in the first place. If cops abandon a sex trafficked girl at a bus station because “they’re at the end of their shift”, it’s easy to accuse either incompetence or outright malice. 

I’ll admit while I have been aware of the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women, I hadn’t done a deep dive into any of the literature or testimony until recently. I’ve personally experienced child abuse and grew up in an environment of hard drugs and addiction, so the subject matter was always something that I sympathized and even empathized with on a certain level, but whenever I get partway through an article my emotions either shut down or break down. “Can’t Drink Saltwater” was an incredible way to become immersed in a different perspective- an authentic and personal perspective- and become more viscerally aware of the issue but without clinically detaching my emotions from the topic’s severity. Before, I was sympathetic to the statistics, but now I can remember the tragedy of Star, and how the world should have done better by her. It is easy to see the power of theatre work its magic here, as this show’s received appropriately high praise within the theatre community and beyond. This review took so long to write because the show needed me to properly put in my due diligence. 

“Can’t Drink Saltwater” has excellent dramaturgy, as it constantly uses details from our literal real life to immerse us in the story. This mostly comes from little things like references to “Costco” or “Pampelmouse” or “The Poverello Center” inspire a genuine chuckle. Almost like the audience is entranced in the typical ritual of seeing a play and are then reminded “oh yeah. This is a play about real stuff”. In some way it breaks the fourth wall while also rebuilding it to include the audience. This works wonders for helping the show’s activism, where the dramaturgy is at its strongest. The play is a script, but the theatrical event as a whole incorporated real world survival resources into the lobby, the program, and this loops back into the narrative. In a genuinely Brechtian move near the end of the first act, Mother (played by Allison Hicks) instructs us to pull out our phones and scan a massive QR code linking to a document about what to do when a loved one is missing. The act of pulling out a phone is such a taboo in theatre spaces that being instructed to do so (she even acknowledges the bizarre instruction by telling us to turn the phones back on) was a brilliant way to have the story break free from its theatrical vessel and imprint how this work of theatre represents a literal issue. I also give massive props for seeing the actual action through and literally taking the time for the audience to really really scan that QR code. I’ve seen many plays where moments like this are simply gestured at and the activism comes off as a cute bit, because that’s what it literally is. 

So as far as what this show represents and what it believes, I think it’s great. As far as the show’s quality as a show… it’s pretty good. And that’s what I desperately wanna talk about. Lots of response to this show will use “incredible” or “mind-blowing” or “the best theatre Montana has ever seen”, and I’m not gonna pretend that people weren’t legitimately amazed by the experience, because it’s not the kind of thing Montana is used to seeing. But it has its issues.

I love the story the artists are telling, I love many of the ways they went about telling it, and I love when they attempt something truly original in their staging. But just like every other theatre review in this city, I don’t see much commentary on the way the show actually functions on a granular level. I don’t think we should ever pretend a show is good just because it agrees with our politics. So along with the praise I’d like to talk about some of my nitpicks, as they’re moments when I feel this fabulous story wasn’t served as well as it could be. 

RELIGIOUS STUFF

One of the show’s stronger themes was how people keep faith in the face of tragedy. Plot A has Mother struggle with whether to believe her daughter is still alive and plot B shows a women’s shelter being run by two devout Christians, Simon and Dina. (Played by Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson, who are also married in real life) This Christian faith isn’t exactly specified in the show. The Christianity is an implied Protestant or evangelical denomination that lives within the vague “Live, Laugh, Love” variety. No rosary beads or books of mormon. Just a bland midwest environment and lots of talks about how Jesus is good. 

This show emphasizes the intrinsically invasive qualities of American Christianity. Vic (played by Jennifer Lynn) is a trafficking survivor and recent shelter resident. All of act 1 shows her struggling to find agency in a world that’s stolen it from her and refuses to give it to her even when it tries to help, and this leaves an excellent tension as you wonder when she’s going to speak her mind. In the top of act 2 she unleashes explosive monologue at Simon and Dina about how she refuses to be a “vessel” for any man- even in a spiritual sense- even if it’s Jesus. 

Because of its ubiquity, most Christians don’t recognize how unique their religion is. The idea that a believer must spread the gospel is what largely sets Christianity aside from most other religions, which don’t always have a clear example of the afterlife- or even if they do, there isn’t necessarily a mission to “save” someone from suffering in a damned afterlife. This “savior complex” is why Christians have an ideological eagerness to help others, but whether this help is always helpful is one of the show’s major questions. 

American Christianity’s distinct spiritual feature is the complete disregard for consent. American enslavers used biblical language about “masters” to pretend to be correct about why they get to own and sell people. American colonialism is driven by a spiritual “Manifest Destiny”, “saving” the non-believers through genocide. Even Jesus’ origin story is a little dubious with consent. 

In the english translation of the gospel, Angel Gabriel doesn’t ask Mary’s consent for his boss to spiritually inseminate her. No “Hey God is into you. Are you into him? Do you want his kid?” Instead, he says (paraphrased) “God is going to impregnate you. His power will overshadow you. And you will like it.” And she’s like (paraphrased) “Okay I guess.” 

She doesn’t say “no” but she doesn’t exactly say “yes”. Mary says (literally) “I am the Lord’s servant”. Not exactly enthusiastic… and obviously it’s open to interpretation but the mainstream Christian perspective presumes: “Her conception couldn’t be rape. Why wouldn’t she consent? God giving her a baby is a good thing.” 

But this is mythmaking and didn’t actually happen because angels don’t actually exist. The story is about informing how we should act in the real world. In the real world, this fable coerces followers into a mindset of: “trying to convert you couldn’t be rude. Why wouldn’t you consent? Saving you from an afterlife of suffering is a good thing”. So this play was able to use the setting of a Christian women’s shelter to expose these casual patterns of colonialism that are baked into every layer of our societal support systems. 

And as a work of theatre this angle provided a unique, spiritually tactile experience for the audience. The magic of the stage- the moving set, the projections, the lighting and wirework- are all mechanisms of how we tell and see a play. No character sees a moving set and says “why is our wall moving?” You as the audience see the artifice of the moving set, but the sincere performance compels you to believe what the actor believes. This suspension of disbelief is what makes theatre feel magical, and this magic is often assisted even further by stylizing the technical elements to fit the themes of the play. For example, “Dear Evan Hansen” doesn’t build realistic high school or house sets, instead utilizing lights and projections and screens to reflect the social media mindset Hansen lives in.

The “Can’t Drink Saltwater” theatre-magic was all “explained” as the physical manifestation of First Nations spirituality. The rippling patterns on the moving backdrops are beautiful and evocative of organic life, but later revealed by Star (or Star’s spirit) to be a river map.

She speaks to a gigantic projection of a Sockeye Salmon, and is lifted into the sky through impressive wirework. But Jesus is merely mentioned by name. Like how “A Christmas Carol’s” ghosts establish an in-universe “literal” presence of European deities, “Can’t Drink Saltwater” canonically establishes that First Nations beliefs are really real. The most prominent spiritual entity is an anthropomorphic Raven character in punk biker leathers, played by Bradley Lewis. (Note: I’m using nonbinary pronouns for Raven as the gender wasn’t specified and I’m not an ornithologist)

Ravens, like sockeye salmon, are significant in Pacific Northwest First Nations culture and mythology. Raven in this show maintains a physical and almost always invisible presence throughout the show, sometimes commenting on the scenes in silence; statements through observation. Also, they would sometimes pick up random objects from the world, cuz ya know, they’re a raven. This is a lovely aspect of the story, it kept a sense of magic throughout the show, and I admire the commitment to ambiguity as the show never outright says what’s going on. But there were a few aspects that didn’t work as well as I’d like. 

While the overall mask-work was solid, there were several moments where Raven interacted with the physical world and it took a sec for me to realize that that’s what happened. I don’t know if it was from performance or direction, but there didn’t seem to be a difference in physicality or behavior that would indicate when Raven is choosing to interact with the other characters or when they’re just vibing and observing. 

If the split focus is intentional, this liminality could reveal how there’s no real divide between the spiritual world and our own. And I could like this. This supports the theme of subverting western spiritual norms, as Christianity’s “kingdom of heaven” tends to make the religion act as a nation with physical theological borders. This logic has motivated colonists to view certain lands and its peoples as “holy” or “unholy”, which then fueled Manifest Destiny.  This theme is explicitly shown by Jen (played by Serenity Mariana) refusing an invitation to go to Simon and Dina’s church, as her beliefs can exist without that physical requirement. In the second act, Jen accidentally cuts herself and is suddenly able to see Raven, but the reveal was a little unclear. Raven was staged outside the house, standing by the window, but the window was so small that it was hard to make out what Jen was seeing at first.

Soooo was this intentional? When Raven opens Star’s case file at the police station and throws it on the desk- surprising the lazy sheriff and vindicating Mother for knowing the file existed, my thought was “Oh. The raven could always do that? Okay then”. But I’m not sure if I was supposed to think that or if it was supposed to be a bigger “wow” moment, because there were other moments in the show where I’m pretty sure I got what they were going for but it just didn’t land. 

TROPES

There was an interesting bit where Raven was playing with Mother’s Polaroid camera and they get surprised by the flash photography. It’s a cute bit, and it got a laugh from the audience, but in my opinion it’s an example of a trope holding the story back. The trope being: primitive character doesn’t know how technology works. It was a surprisingly Disney-ey moment, akin to Ariel in The Little Mermaid with the fork or the apes in Tarzan with the Phil Collins, and it raises questions about how Raven… works exactly. If they know enough about police files or leather biker jackets then they’d also know what a camera is, right? 

What really made it feel out of place was the execution.  Once again, the bit got a laugh from some of the audience, though in my opinion the laugh wasn’t from it being a good bit but laughing from the recognition that it was a bit. The reaction to the flash was a canned “surprise”- the actor was anticipating the flash- so their body already had tension, instead of being in a neutral or vulnerable place and then the camera flash introducing tension. So because there was less contrast of tension in the moment, there was less potential laughter and the laughter that was there was as canned as Raven’s reaction. I’ll admit this is extremely nitpicky and I’m not trying to be mean (cuz Lewis did a solid job in general), but this kind of detail is what makes a work of theatre just pretty good instead of excellent or incredible. 

So in a work of art that brings so many new things to the table and conjures delicious tension in so many other aspects, the use of a trope or a familiar bit of slapstick like this is going to bring the energy of the show back to a more traditional play and in my opinion it kinda theatrically whitewashes the overall piece. The play is already challenging the audience as it should, so whenever the storytellers use a trope, the audience will relax as they kinda know what’s gonna happen next, but this relaxation is counter to a story that isn’t about making white audiences comfortable. 

At times, it felt like I was flipping the channel between a Sesame Street special about racism and an episode of The Wire. Before the main plot concludes with the somber, horrific, and realistic scenario of Mother having to accept that her daughter will never be found, the secondary plot at the shelter ends with a food fight. 

I saw what the climax was going for but I have some nuanced thoughts on it. We’ll get to narrative nitpicks later, but the actual food fight was… fine. It had all the motions of a food fight but it lacked spontaneity. Lots of gesture and half-hearted throws, with enough improvised choreography that the big specific moments like Simon getting a pie in the face were unfocused and didn’t have the pop needed to earn the big laugh or the big applause. It got a response, but from where I was sitting it was just an okay response.  

So if the play’s gonna use a food fight, let’s talk about Food Fights. Food fights are fun in film because they get to depict things that are specifically messy and difficult to clean, like squirting ketchup bottles at each other. A film set doesn’t need to clean things for every performance like a stage show, and stage shows are incentivized to keep the theater clean. Same with the costumes. But this also changes the storytelling. With the food fight trope, there’s typically a transformation of characters as well as the space. 

Characters used to be clean and proper but now after this act of rebellion they are physically messy, representing how far they’ve come in the story and that there’s no going back. At once affirming their power as youths and growing up to affirm their position as the new generation. This theme of young people taking charge is so strong that in Hook, the food fight is where adult Robin Williams finally gets in touch with his inner child and he starts transforming back into Peter Pan, the ultimate modern symbol of eternal youth. But that visual metaphor is lost when the costumes aren’t allowed to get sticky or wet or stained. Most importantly, it’s just less fun for the audience.

In “Can’t Drink Saltwater”, the characters mostly threw candy and popcorn, which doesn’t have the same visual pizzazz, nor the same aerodynamic qualities as a glob of spaghetti or a can of whipped cream. It makes one realize how the laws of physics are narratively significant. If you’re throwing a handful of small things, you simply can’t control where they all go. So you might think you’re using a prop, but you’re not actually using a prop. You’re technically using twenty to fifty tiny props at once. So on one hand, the actors pulled their throws with the candy cuz they didn’t want to pelt a scene partner in the eye with a Mike’s Red Hot, and this is technically necessary because safety is most important. But narratively this made the characters look hesitant when they should be cutting loose. On the other hand, when they did put their back into the throw, it was just with the popcorn, which made the actual act of throwing seem futile and weightless… Cuz it’s popcorn. They might as well be throwing napkins. Unfortunately the whole spectacle had the unintended effect of comedically contrasting these young women’s emotional aggression with their seemingly physical weakness.

Look, I get very picky with my lazzi, and I get extra picky when someone invokes literal clown gags into an otherwise dramatic work. Humor is wonderful and necessary for digesting tough material, and I agree it is dramatically satisfying to have a big laugh right before the somber tragedy that ends the play proper. But in my opinion the technical elements of the fight were holding the actors back from committing to the action and it took away from the sincerity of the narrative. It was disappointing to see such a literal Hollywood cliche: the edgy kid literally yelling “fooooood fiiiiiight!” before the young whippersnappers show the old stuffy folk who’s really in control. And the audience recognized this cliche with some modest laughter like with any reference humor, but unlike lines referencing “pamplemouse”, “Costco”, or “Poverello center”, food fights aren’t something we really see in the real world. The humor came less from the visceral “funny” of a pie in the face of the white guy in charge, and more of a recognition of the pop culture reference: “pie in the face of the white guy in charge”. 

At the end of the show the actor playing Joey, Octavio Jimenez, had a line saying “help us pick up the mess”; breaking the fourth wall and getting the audience to pick up the popcorn out of the seats. This sounds clever cuz audience engagement is always fun and without examination, it seems like some metaphor is being said about the community coming together to clean up a mess of some kind. But then you remember that the people who made this particular mess are young indigenous women and that “the mess” is the act of rebellion against the white wealthy establishment. Aaaaand you realize that because it’s just a few handfuls of popcorn and hard candy, this protest can get sucked up by a vacuum in 30 seconds as if it never happened and any “help” cleaning is ultimately performative. So with all due respect, this whole sequence is cute but it fails as a metaphor. 

POLITICS

The point of the play is about raising awareness of a serious issue and treating indigenous people as human beings instead of just statistics. When Vic gives a speech to the shelter donors and says “do better”, I think it was meant to be broad, because I don’t think the issue with murdered and missing indigenous women is that the donor class doesn’t donate enough. In my opinion, there are larger systemic issues raping society that will never get solved through charity, which is why we need to tax the entire wealth class that the few sympathetic donors happen to come from. It seems the playwright is aware of that and didn’t want to write a play that directly addresses the specific politics and politicians that cause this problem. Otherwise if she was trying to make a hard hitting political statement or a systemic call to action… I unfortunately missed it. 

Because we can be aware of the issue, but there are some differences in how states try to “eliminate” the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. 

Starting in 2019, Montana has made some attempts to bandaid the issue with a task force. Thankfully the issue is so obviously bad that even most of the Republicans will vote for bills that help the program, except for that wannabe Nazi Lukas Schubert, cuz of course. The most recent bill allows the task force to raise its own funds now, which is better than nothing but also begs why the program needs to rely on charity instead of being properly funded by taxing the wealthy. 

Star’s mother is from Bellingham, Washington and here is where we see the incompetent sheriff that either doesn’t care or doesn’t have the energy to seem to care about her case. From what I’ve seen, WA’s program is a bit more extensive than Montana’s and they acknowledge that this issue is the end result of deeper societal wrongdoings. But it also can get slightly silly. 

Hot take but I believe women are people. Now this might seem weird to say but for some reason Washington’s task force separates women from the category of people, the same way it separates the words and definitions of “Missing” and “Murdered”. This directly hits on one of the challenges that Kendra faced when writing this play: a well intentioned man asked her “Is this a play about human trafficking or is it a play about Native trafficking?” and after taking a whole day to process that insane comment, she thought “native people are human”.

So why did the Washington State task force tack on the “& people”? Well, I got a theory:  the issue primarily concerns women, and Mylnechuck Potter typically refers to it as a women’s issue.. but any indigenous person could be victimized so well intentioned liberals don’t wanna leave them out. In fact, after collecting data since 2019, Montana’s task force claims that gender makes little to no difference in whether someone goes missing. 

Also, trans people kinda throw a linguistic wrench into any movement that aims to help people with a specific gender or body type. For a topical example: Shadie Wallette, the actor playing the missing woman Star, uses nonbinary pronouns. I wanna joke that if we really wanna be woke we should just call the issue “MMI-AFAB-P”. 

Ultimately like most issues plaguing the states, the massive ambitious programs necessary for solving these issues comes down to the federal government, as they have the money and resources. Every Tomahawk Missile we use to kill children in Iran is money we could use to help children who belong to the tribe that invented the word Tomahawk. 

Aside from the missed opportunity for political poignancy, there’s also missed opportunities for characterization, cuz miraculously the we spent two hours with an evangelical couple from Montana and didn’t even hear a single mention of Trump. If only we were so lucky in real life. 

CONCLUSION

“Can’t Drink Saltwater” was pretty good but not great, and as much as I adore everything it represents and sets out to accomplish, I don’t want to pretend that I’m not disappointed as an audience member. Was it because of the writing? Eh. Where I personally wish the play sunk its beak deeper into the republicans and democrats responsible for this mess, I don’t think Kendra Mylnechuck Potter missed her own mark. She wrote a script where a sympathetic young indigenous survivor straight up tells the audience to “Do better” and while broad, there is some value in that. I didn’t research the topic until seeing the show and I’m sure I’m not the only white lady with that experience. 

So was it the staging? Eh. So much of the show worked on so many other levels that I don’t doubt Meghan Finn’s skill as a director. Yes it has that vibe where you could just sorta tell the show was directed by a white lady, but that’s fine. Oh my god, given my luck she might just be white passing- the point is I don’t think the quality of any show comes down to blood quantum. It’s often hard to pinpoint why a good show just doesn’t quite make it to great, but in my opinion the biggest challenge this particular play faced was practical and simple: they just needed more rehearsal time you guys. More time to work the bits. Deeper dives into the character beats. Memorizing the lines rote. Repeating the choreography ad nauseum until it was honed to a shine. 

I saw it on the Friday of closing weekend, so seeing the performers nervous to fully commit to technical elements makes me yearn for a future production with a more generous rehearsal schedule- which would mean paying the performers over a longer period. Being rushed could also be why the show makes ample use of cliche, because those are easy to write and direct and making excellent theatre is really hard. Sometimes if you want the audience to laugh, you hit someone in the face with a pie and work backwards from there. 

So the show was pretty good but unfortunately held back by cliche. My constructive criticism is less that “Can’t Drink Saltwater” used cliches and more that because cliches provide a safe narrative space for the audience, the cast needed twice the amount of work for those western theatrical tropes to be appropriated into the larger indigenous story, and it’s a story people need to see.