Wakey, Wakey NYC Reviews and Tickets

“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."
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"Even though I patiently waited, hoping to get some insight as to why we were gathered here, it never came to me...Eno has said of his work that one shouldn’t come to his plays expecting tidy resolutions, clearly drawn narrative arcs or characters. And if that is his purpose here, he has succeeded...If there is pleasure to be had from 'Wakey Wakey,' it may be in the game of guessing what that was all about. For this theatre junkie, 'Wakey Wakey' put me to sleep."
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"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."
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"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."
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"The highly lauded Eno...has a gift for unusual situations and quirkily delightful dialogue, and he knows how to get laughs with verbal surprises, but in 'Wakey, Wakey,' he offers little new or revelatory about the human condition. And, while conflict is a standard ingredient in most plays, you won't find much of it here...Its acting and production elements score highly, but while some visitors will certainly be touched others are likely to find 'Wakey, Wakey' too wishy-washy for their tastes."
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“‘Wakey, Wakey’ is about death, life and the things in between and in all honesty we’ve heard it all before...Basically the whole plot is to enjoy the little things in life. Emerson is wonderful in the role, but the play is monotonous…Will Eno also directed this and he does his play an injustice. Maybe another director could have added life into this piece instead of oblivion.”
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"Emerson’s remarkably spontaneous performance suggests Pee-Wee Herman after a stroke, as if he’s making up the words on the spot. What better impression can an actor give us? What’s great for an actor, however, is not so wonderful for a playwright...Writing about death should not create this much dead air in the theater...Even with a running time of 75 minutes, 'Wakey, Wakey' inspires wristwatch-checking in the dark like few other plays you will see this year."
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"The only possible reason to catch it is the all-too-rare opportunity to see Michael Emerson back on stage. No one does misery better than Emerson, and he certainly has cause to be miserable here...To me, the final moments came across as a desperate attempt by the playwright-director to distract the audience from the inadequacy of all that preceded it. I posit that under the pressure of owing Signature a new play, this was the best that Eno could throw together."
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