Wakey, Wakey

"'Wakey, Wakey' is Will Eno at his surreal, troubling, beautiful best, a play both challenging and easily absorbed. He truly approaches the unapproachable: the meaning of life." Full Review

“Eno and Emerson achieve a stunning feat, compelling an audience of strangers to deeply mourn the loss of a man who is not only a stranger but a fiction…Perhaps this is in part because Eno’s clever script, paired with Emerson’s oh-so-human performance, entwines the intimate and the universal…‘Wakey, Wakey’ is a truly great play, one that reasserts the unique power of theatre...You'll want to recapture the heart-bursting, life-affirming feeling again and again." Full Review

“An experience that is intimate, moving, and surprisingly entertaining...Emerson’s portrayal of the dying man has a weighted serenity…Death is imminent in this oddly funny play…It is simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking as the pleasant party host's final moment comes…Eno's direction of his own script is tender, precise, and robust at all the right moments...It has the potential to be the most moving experience one could have in a theatre." Full Review

“A mysterious and ultimately deeply moving play…It features an actor delivering a mesmerizing monologue that plays with your mind and ultimately with your heart...A play about death that ultimately celebrates life in both a profound and light-hearted way (I won’t spoil the joyous, revelatory last few moments)." Full Review

"Eno has never shied away from the existential or phenomenological. His greatest skill may well be his ability to dramatize them...Emerson's wide eyes and wry tone are a natural match for Eno’s crisp, energetic language, oscillating between calm certainty and sad resignation...Eno's strategy is usually to evoke one emotion and then its opposite, to jostle us from one end of the spectrum to another until we can’t tell them apart...I believe 'Wakey, Wakey' strikes that perfect calibration." Full Review

"Emerson doesn't disappoint. He's perfectly suited for Eno's perfectly 'normal' dialogue contained in what appears to be a well-made play but actually makes you question the whole form and shape of a theatrical experience altogether...This play was simply a rich, beautiful experience filled with thoughtfulness and mystery...Here are five solid reasons why you should see 'Wakey, Wakey:' 1) Will Eno 2) Life 3) Death 4) Gratitude 5) It sticks to your ribs." Full Review

"The production itself is excellent. Emerson commands the play’s short running time without really physically moving at all...But Eno (directing his own work for the first time) is the star of 'Wakey Wakey,; and he’s at his most achingly, triumphantly humanist here...Eno has, in this wonderful, wonderful play, actually struck on something resembling a satisfying answer to death, buried somewhere in the knowledge that we live a million rebirths in even the smallest of gifts we leave behind." Full Review

"Dying is a stand-up routine in 'Wakey, Wakey,' the glowingly dark, profoundly moving new play by Will Eno. Portrayed with a master’s blend of pretty much every emotion there is by Michael Emerson, the monologuist at the center of this short, resonant tragicomedy is the M.C. of his own demise...The astonishment of Mr. Emerson’s performance is how universal and particular it is, saying that, yes, we all die, but we all die as individuals." Full Review

“A quietly beautiful piece…Eno knows that there are only so many ways of saying, ‘You will die; celebrate life,’ so he makes a spectacle of vamping and false starts, awkward yet deeply felt pauses, as the keen, funny, transfixing Emerson reads from index cards, gets his slides confused and bathes the audience in his gentle, beatific fussiness...You know how great actors have the ability to age decades right before your eyes? That happens here, and it's a pure astonishment.” Full Review

"Eno’s effective but terribly sad play...Emerson’s performance is remarkable. What he does will leave you deeply moved. As the end approaches his face is wracked with a combination of pain, bewilderment and fatalism, all fused to poignant dramatic effect. The author, who also is the director, energizes the play with projections...'Wakey, Wakey' is highly sensitive theater that may touch raw nerves...On the other hand, it can also provide a note of courage and understanding." Full Review

"'Wakey, Wakey' struck me as indebted equally to two Irishmen, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce...His subjects are death, existence and the meaning of life. This near monologue is delivered with exquisite, deliberate conviction by Michael Emerson in a voice at once quizzical and confessional, an irresistible combination. Big ones, these questions, though delivered with a kind of innocence Beckett mostly abjured but that Joyce could take delight in." Full Review

"A work of humor, humanity and grace that makes you want to hug your lover, your neighbor and maybe an usher on the way out. It also offers a captivating, playful and deeply moving performance by Michael Emerson...Eno breaks the fourth wall but here he also suggests a wondrous fifth: a world beyond the memories of the past and the realities of the present and towards the inevitable adjustment nature demands. It’s a loving transition, theatrically told in a style that is Eno’s own." Full Review

"If that sounds tricky to watch and baffling, it is—and yet you hang on every word...Eno by not making the story or Guy easy to comprehend makes it that much more engrossing. Sometimes, just when it feels too slight, Eno inserts a piece of mischievous whimsy, or sharp observation, or, at one point, the sudden, mournful strains of 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head'...An unexpectedly uplifting play." Full Review

"Will Eno's elegant and gently sad 75-minute play...Although Guy's stream-of-consciousness monologue comes in a disjointed start-and-stop way, it is surprisingly illuminating...Production values are stellar...Emerson is remarkable as Guy, a likable and reflective man whose nuanced facial expressions reflect amusement as well as the stings of discomfort, pain, thirst...We leave the theater touched by the spirit of Guy and his words." Full Review

"Never morbid, it is surprisingly illuminating and insightful, even revelatory...Sensitively directed by the playwright...I suspect those who are familiar with Eno's plays will find that 'Wakey, Wakey' is his most easily embraced and most deliberately accessible...The press release has this hopeful line: '..there's a chance this will be a really good experience.' It was...and more." Full Review

“Though it may seem to be a mediation on death, ‘Wakey, Wakey’ is really a celebration of life...Without being maudlin, or resorting to clichés and affirmations, Guy involves us in his compelling contemplation of mortality. Emerson’s casual, beautifully paced performance, as well as Eno’s sharp writing, make for a hypnotic duo. The ending is a spectacle that leaves the audience with a huge collective grin.” Full Review

“Death becomes Will Eno, writer and director of this odd but gently urgent play…Played by Michael Emerson with a magnetic open-hearted humor, we stay connected even when the going gets curious. And it does...Guy takes stock and shares a little advice. 'Take care of each other,' he says. Playing an aide, January LaVoy arrives late to do that. We should be so lucky as to have someone who radiates as much warmth as this actress does when time’s up." Full Review

"The hook that reels us into this abstruse, tricky, stream-of-consciousness contemplation of mortality is a beautiful performance from Michael Emerson...While the thematic richness of 'Wakey, Wakey' creeps up on you during its brief 75-minute run time, few will make the claim that this is a major addition to Eno's distinctive body of work...Nevertheless, Eno's unique voice — quizzical, perceptive, assertively compassionate — is one to be celebrated." Full Review

"'Wakey, Wakey' isn’t really a play. It’s an accounting of the things that matter in life...Presented with quiet authority and a soft, ironic humor by the remarkable Michael Emerson, observations that might otherwise seem random, and sentimental, coalesce into a painful but brave last embrace of ordinary pleasures...The evening gains additional poignancy if you see it as Eno’s tribute to James Houghton, the founder and artistic director of the Signature Theatre." Full Review

“Eno knows that his approach, resolutely shirking conventional expectations, will infuriate some theatergoers. His previous works in this gnomic vein (‘Thom Pain,’ ‘Title and Deed’) left me uninfuriated but also unenthusiastic. But ‘Wakey Wakey's’ sharp writing, heightened by the easygoing asperity of Emerson's performance, stirs deeper feelings. Granted, the truth it conveys is small, rarefied, and overly hedged with decorative distractions. Even so, it's genuine." Full Review

"Eno's most accomplished and affecting piece to date...As long as Emerson and LaVoy hold the stage, a mood of deep, possibly profound feeling pervades the auditorium. But the playwright is either too hobbled by irony or too afraid of the darkness not to spike the action with overly cute bits of business...Eno's world continues to seem like Existentialism Lite. Emerson is the real thing, however; the look in his eyes as he fades away says more than the play's complete text." Full Review

"His thoughts seem to wander every which way...but when you take a closer look, they're as focused as a laser beam...Even after Lisa enters the picture, Eno's dialogue remains stilted and aloof. It serves the play's purposes—and could not be given a more naturalistic performance than the one Emerson is delivering. But if you require peaks and valleys of drama to keep you engaged in a story, you may get sleepy within 'Wakey, Wakey's' microscopic modulations and extended silences." Full Review

"It all can amount to too much in the end, however. Even with the talents of Emerson and Lavoy to guide the production, the play still struggles in its tonal shifts, overreaching in its attempts to bridge its moments of cynicism and fear with its tender moments of redemption. Eno undoubtedly loves to show his hand in this play, but sometimes it is that very hand that obstructs our view...But all that isn't to say that 'Wakey, Wakey' doesn't have its moments; in fact, it has plenty." Full Review

"I did like it better than anything else I’ve seen by Eno...With gentle humor and a lack of fussiness, Michael Emerson manages to woo us through the deliberate vagueness, starts and stops, and meta interruptions of his monologue...Much of what Eno’s script is trying to induce about the celebration and uncertainty of life and death has been done better and with more clarity elsewhere...But Eno the playwright is well served in 'Wakey Wakey' by Eno the director, and by Emerson and LaVoy." Full Review

“Emerson makes for appealing company and Eno's meandering text has its cute and funny moments. Checking out some Guy's childhood photos and hearing his thoughts about a distant siren are actually more amusing than they sound. But there's also a redundant meta quality that gets tiresome.” Full Review