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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Wakey Wakey Also see Richard's reviews of Jagged Little Pill and 12th Annual LaBute New Theater Festival
I've heard it described as a survival instinct, the sudden threshold blankness that wipes away any foolish preconceptions about our arrival in a new (and possibly dangerous) set of circumstances. But survival, in this quiet and sly staging, becomes entirely secondary to just learning how to seize a magical moment of not knowing. For the audience, the "possible danger" is death itself, as an old man (Joe Hanrahan, the founder of this company) waits to be wheeled out of his house one last time, surrounded by boxes of belongings, perhaps the remains from a yard sale, stacked up all around. A caretaker, Lisa (the wonderful Rachel Hanks), appears later in the very subdued action. And it's possible that Wakey Wakey will be as close as modern theatre gets to a Sunday morning church sermon, where Mr. Hanrahan, in a gentle, husk-like performance, guides us from one transitional moment to the next (though we're asked not to say how long this one-act play actually is). But like the production's swirling tunnel of infinity, something eternal rings in your ears long after the sermon's over. It's like Beckett, if Beckett were Buddhist, I suppose, which almost sounds unconscionable. Why would you rob the author of Waiting for Godot of his last great possession, his own gargantuan fears? But Ms. Hanks' sunny disposition and saffron-colored sweater help change the chemistry of this end-of-life comedy, though not as much as Mr. Hanrahan's own gentle guidance toward a final threshold. And where Beckett's characters seem to be running away from something terrible, Mr. Eno's exercise in pure awareness is much more distinctly American, befuddled and hopeful and comfortably numb to the darker side of entropy. Here, Mr. Hanrahan's like a rumpled Lieutenant Columbo, squinting to see things anew one last time, as his existence tends toward a kind of mental yoga. The gradual twisting of his mind into a pretzel of infinity becomes the desired state, more than any completed lotus position itself. The show doesn't ask us to put on a brave face, nor to ignore the mind's invisible swirling alligators of infirmity, as we're lowered into some nightmarish pit of diminished capacity. But Ms. Hanks' Lisa, is endlessly reassuring and regularly tries to draw him out, in any positive way she can. And unlike the incomprehensible tape recorder in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, each moment spent fumbling with a TV remote or with a little pile of index cards becomes like the everyday meaning of life itself: an eternal moment of hunting and gathering where waiting itself must wait in the wings. It's immensely comforting to be reminded of the positive turning points in one's life, as happens here. And the play's meditations on the door-like nature of life's biggest questions make a long and healthy survival seem almost beside the point–like the dangling, inconsequential tail on a kite. In this one-man/two-person meditation, consciousness finally flies up on a billowing wind, as day-to-day existence, like some very marginal counter-balance, sways below. Wakey Wakey, produced by the Midnight Theater Company, continues through August 1, 2026 at the Chapel on Alexander, 6238 Alexander Drive. For tickets and more information, please visit www.midnightcompany.com or metrotix.com Cast: Production Staff: |
