Photo of Rachel Hanks and Joe Hanrahan in The Midnight Company’s performance of Wakey, Wakey. Photo by Joey Rumpell
Imagine yourself in a small room, surrounded by cardboard boxes. There’s a crowd gathered around a man in a wheelchair. He seems to be in charge; in fact, he seems to be the only person who knows why any of you are even here. Over the course of the next hour, you’ll hear this man’s thoughts on life and death and the nature of the world. You’ll also watch some funny animal videos and see some cute pictures of kids eating ice cream. What does it all mean? Even our MC doesn’t seem to know for sure, but we’ll all figure it out together, somehow.
That is the setup for Wakey, Wakey, an 80-percent one-man show from The Midnight Company. Written by acclaimed contemporary playwright Will Eno, it has the feel of a comic monologue crossed with a eulogy, with a little bit of performance art thrown in. Like most of The Midnight Company’s mainstage shows, it takes place at The Chapel (6238 Alexander Dr.), a beautiful performing arts space located near Forest Park. Connected to a historic church and featuring pews and stained glass windows, it is an appropriate event space for a play which, as the title suggests, is written as an eccentric and surprisingly entertaining wake.
The program identifies our guide as “Guy,” but you will rarely hear his name spoken. In fact, you will learn almost nothing about this man’s past, but you get a definite feel for him as a person. That’s due to Joe Hanrahan and his impeccable comic chops. Hanrahan, who is also the company’s creative director, controls the narrative flow with casual cool. He spends the majority of the hour sitting in his wheelchair, though he occasionally gets up to stretch or fetch objects from around the room. Pulling cue cards from a basket and wielding a TV remote, he triggers a disco ball, word scrambles, and other bursts of light and sound. Is this some elaborate psychological experiment?
Eno’s script nixes any sort of exposition. Instead, we glean Guy’s philosophy of the world and his attitude toward life in real-time. Hanrahan plays him as a man determined to have the last laugh, an MC trying to keep the show going for as long as he can, bringing a weary, resigned feeling to the performance. His sardonic sense of humor masks his sadness and regret, the true source of which comes into sharp focus at the end of the play in a stark, earned tonal shift. In the final ten to fifteen minutes, Guy is joined on stage by a character named Lisa, played by Rachel Hanks. Her brief appearance helps ground the emotional conclusion of the play, bringing a quiet dignity to the proceedings.
Public speaking is a fear greater than death for many, but Guy has clearly reached a place beyond that fear. He may be trapped in a failing, aging body, but his spirit is too large to be contained and is finally free to wander. It makes for a fascinating communal experience and a necessary alternative to the big, loud, dazzling musicals that tend to dominate the St. Louis summer theater season.
Wakey, Wakey ran through August 1st. . [Editor’s note: Apologies for not getting this posted during the show’s run! The Arts STL was undergoing a site migration and we were unable to upload any new articles for a little while there. –JG] If you want more time with The Midnight Company, you can catch the encore performance of Just One Look, Hanrahan’s original cabaret show based on the life and work of Linda Ronstadt. It returns to the Blue Strawberry on August 15. Following that, Critics, an original show written by and starring Hanrahan, will premiere on Friday, September 25. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit. midnightcompany.com. | Rob Von Nordheim
