Wakey, Wakey

At Pacific Theatre until October 23, 2021
Tickets from $10 at tickets@pacifictheatre.org

Posted October 8, 2021

“I knew I’d get old. I just didn’t think it would happen this soon.” That’s not a line from Will Eno’s play Wakey, Wakey but that pithy line was triggered in me by this play which, in many ways, is more a rumination on life, death and theatre than a play per se.

Right off the top we very briefly meet Guy (Craig Erickson): he’s in his pjs, stretched out on the floor: “I thought I had more time.” Blackout. When the lights come back up, he’s in a wheelchair, surrounded by boxes.  He’s moving? He’s leaving – permanently?

Having very recently experienced a death in the family, I may or may not have been a good candidate for Wakey, Wakey. Guy’s thoughts on what it was all about, what it was all for, have been running through my head, too. Projected photos of Guy as a baby, as a toddler and growing up, found their parallel in the boxes of photos my family and I have been going through: such a darling infant, what a handsome teenager, what an adventurous adult, gone too soon.

Amazingly – and thanks to the extraordinary performance by Erickson – Wakey, Wakey is not a downer. Erickson finds and maintains a very fine balance: he’s at once rueful and amused at his character’s situation. “Never a dull  moment,” Guy says. “Well, maybe not never”. And there’s Erickson’s little laugh, that small secret smile, that conspiratorial “We’re-all-in-this-together” look as he peers out at us sitting in the theatre.

Erickson and the playwright draw us in, making us believe we are part of something. And in a way we are: it’s called Life. They toy with us; although Guy admits the whole thing is scripted and rehearsed, he says, “I don’t know exactly what to say to you.” He flips through index cards in his pockets, reading them and, mostly rejecting them, tossing them away. He gets out of his wheelchair and just as we are thinking, “Oh, he can walk”, he chortles, “I can walk!” as if reading our very thoughts and getting a kick out of it. A less skilled actor could not possibly pull this role off.  Lily Jariak in her DATEBOOK review of a Geary Theatre production in 2020 was unimpressed by Wakey, Wakey and wrote, “The part needs an actor with the stage chops to sculpt something out of nothing, to make meandering feel like driving, to rally every tendon and nerve and charge them toward a single, crisply defined purpose.” Erickson is such a one.

Agnes Tong makes a late-in-the-play appearance as matter-of-fact Lisa who performs a bit of reiki and expressive dance around Guy’s wheelchair.

Projections, which form an important part of the production, are by Wladimiro A. Woyno R and the sense of Wakey, Wakey being scripted/unscripted is furthered by the wrong projections turning up as well as by musical cues not being what Guy expected. Music, asked by Guy to be “cheerful”,  turns out to be anything but. Oh, well. That’s life, seems to be Guy’s response to the screw-ups.

Wakey, Wakey is sensitively and expertly directed by Kaitlin Williams, recently appointed Artistic Director of Pacific Theatre. And very creative lighting that includes lighting the audience on occasion is by Chengyan Boon.

Overall – and perhaps because of the space I’m in or because that’s exactly what the playwright wants – I found myself in a kind of emotional limbo. If we are here to celebrate life and be joyful, why the cheap confetti, balloons and mirror ball conclusion. Is that all there is? Or is the take-way – and it’s a good one – this: Time takes our loved ones away but Time also gave them to us in the first place. Now that’s something to hang on to.

L’chaim!