at the very bottom of a body of water


The quiet magic realism that has made playwriting stars of Sarah Ruhl and Julia Cho has found a fresh new voice in Benjamin Benne, whose World Premiere drama at the very bottom of a body of water has arrived at Boston Court to captivate and move audiences in equal measure.

Romi Dias stars as Marina, haunted by tragedy and racked with guilt, whose life over the past ten years has consisted of weekly visits to a local fish vendor whose catfish she blends with onion, garlic, tomatoes, chicken base, and shrimp to prepare the most sabrosa of sopas that only she gets to partake of.

Gone from her life are her four adult sons, and as for her daughter Rosa Luz (Natalia Echeverria), for whose fifteenth birthday she has confectioned a dress blooming with hundreds of pink hand-sewn petals, well the fact that Rosa Luz’s quinceañera cake is topped by only five candles which Marina alone can blow out is our first clue that it’s not only her boys who have left her heartbreakingly alone.

It doesn’t help matters that instead of local Japanese fish vendor Yoshi serving her today, it’s his adult son Hiroshi (Rollence Patugan) manning the store, and no matter the younger man’s promise to “get the skin right off that sweet meat—one hundred percent boneless perfection,” as far as Marina is concerned, Hiroshi can’t possibly know how she likes her catfish the way his father does.

Still, what’s a woman in need of ingredients for catfish soup to do but take Hiroshi at his word, and if finding Yoshi’s son at the counter today was a minor inconvenience, imagine Marina’s dismay the next time she returns to find Hiroshi once again there, and permanently it seems.

Thus begins the story of a woman who, in her daughter’s words, holds on to “every dirty, ugly thing,” and a man tethered to a life that is nothing at all like what he dreamed of as a young man.

Completing the cast of characters are Kasumi (Elaine Kao), housebound for years, and Lulu (Doshima Iyorlu), inside whom new life is growing, and if you’d like to know more about how they connect to the characters previously described here, you won’t get it from me in this hopefully spoiler-free review.

What I can tell you is that like playwrights Ruhl and Cho before him, Benjamin Benne mixes authentic human drama with what he describes in his script as “moments of transcendence,” so don’t be surprised if an origami crane should suddenly take flight, or if puppeteer Olivia Xing convinces you that those are real catfish swimming upstage before Hiroshi traps one of them, still wriggling, into his net and chops its head right off.

at the very bottom of a body of water’s Boston Court World Premiere reunites director Juliette Carrillo and the masterful design team that first brought Benne’s play to life as a UC Irvine workshop production earlier this year, and what a team they are.

Ashley Mendez’s fittingly circular set surrounded by a moveable translucent shades-of-blue scrim, Lyall Hovey’s character-perfect costumes, Rachel Fields’ incandescent lighting, Rye Mandel’s many fish store and household props, Ein Kim’s dreamlike projections, and Lynn Jeffries’ fanciful puppets combined with Matt Feeney’s evocative sound design and Eliza Vedar’s mesmerizing original music add up to a production design that fits Benne’s vision to a T.

The remarkable Dias evokes Marina’s guilt and anger and shame and resentment to stunning effect, and Patugan gives as good as he gets as the stoic but wounded Hiroshi, the duo earning bonus points for some palpable body heat. (Amie Farrell is intimacy director.)

Echevarria’s Rosa Luz is as enchanting as she is poignant, Kao reveals the ache hidden under Kasumi’s stone-cold exterior, and Iyorlu (repeating the role she originated at UCI) is simply radiant as the possible key to Marina’s salvation.

Cassie Nesbit is assistant director. Margaret Starbuck is dramaturg. Ashley Weaver is stage manager and Antonia Yang is assistant stage manager. Casting is by Julia Flores.

Magic realism is a tricky thing where this reviewer is concerned. Overdo it and you’ve lost me. Do it right and I’m in its spell.

Benjamin Benne’s at the very bottom of a body of water held me spellbound.

Boston Court Pasadena, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Through November 29. Fridays at 7:30, Saturdays at 2:00 and 7:30, and Sundays at 2:00. Also Thursday November 5 at 7:30
www.BostonCourtPasadena.org

–Steven Stanley
October 30, 2026
Photos: Brian Hashimoto

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