ACT’s ‘Wakey, Wakey’ brings Tony Hale to the spotlight
Offbeat musing on life and death is gently funny
This was all supposed to be something else — something different. Or so we’re told by the only person in the room who is speaking. But what this is and why we’re here isn’t clear, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. Confusing? Yes, absolutely. Delightful and moving? Yes, even more so. That’s the conundrum of Will Eno’s “Wakey, Wakey,” a triumph of spacious playwriting now onstage at American Conservatory Theater’s Geary Theater. Eno, whose work has been produced all over the Bay Area, is the kind of writer who doesn’t fill in all the blanks. He leaves room for his audience to interpret, to feel and to question. Some audience members don’t like that approach. They want to know the whos, whats and whys so they can relax and enjoy the show. In much of Eno’s work, there’s mystery and practicality around the notion of what it means to be a human in the world. You could argue his approach is direct and insightful — or perhaps obfuscating and unfinished. In the case of the quietly moving and gently funny “Wakey, Wakey,” the best possible approach is to relax and let it wash over you without worrying too much about the details. This isn’t a play in the conventional sense — it’s an offbeat musing on life and death that aims more for the glorious than the gloomy. What you need to know is that there’s a guy named Guy played by Emmy Awardwinner Tony Hale of “Arrested Development” and “Veep” fame, and he’s going to speak for about 70 minutes. Sitting in a wheelchair in front of a giant screen, he wears a sports coat and pajama bottoms and makes a rambling sort of presentation that could be called, he suggests, “Elegy for the Eulogist.” Guy says things like, “We’re here to say goodbye and maybe hopefully also get better at saying hello. To celebrate life, if that doesn’t sound too passive-aggressive.” Or, “Time is your friend and time is your enemy. We can choose which,” then he pauses before adding ruefully, “for a while.” Everything Guy says has a life-and-death heft to it. Perhaps in this vague setting he’s somewhere between life and death himself or is in some sort of care facility where he will soon make a transition (the institutional set by Kimie Nishikawa is so nondescript it could be any time and any place). Whatever the situation, the masterful Hale makes Guy someone we warm to immediately. The highly strung, oddball humor we’re used to seeing Hale perform on TV is replaced with warmth, kindness and bemusement. Under the delicately precise guidance of director Anne Kauffman, Guy becomes an every-human attempting to make sense of time, mortality and why we’re here — in the broad existentialist sense and the smaller “why are we in this theater together” sense. At a certain point, Guy is joined by Lisa (Kathryn Smith-McGlynn), whom we met in the short play that opens the evening, “The Substitution,” which Eno created just for this ACT run. Again, who she is and what she’s doing there remains vague. She could be anything from a hospice worker to the Grim Reaper herself, but what she is to Guy is kind and helpful. In its unconventional way, “Wakey, Wakey” is highly theatrical, almost surreal, and at the same time grounded in the emotional weight of life in transition. At one point, Lisa says, almost as if she’s talking about the act of watching a play itself, “Pretend that none of this is pretend, because it isn’t.” Yet somehow, for a play about death, there’s abundant joy — even hope — that lingers. The everyday has ascended to the profound. Chad Jones is a Bay Area freelance writer who blogs at www.theaterdogs.net.