Review of The Comrade's In The Wake

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called In The Wake. It was by Lisa Kron and it was directed by Alex Mallory. It was about a woman named Ellen (Rose Sengenberger) who was in love with two people, Danny (Mike Newquist) and Amy (Alison Plott), while her country and the political world were falling apart around her. She was a devoted democrat while George W. Bush was elected and reelected, and because she is so obsessed it starts to influence her relationships. It is about choices, politics, and blind spots. I think this show has a really strong message about choosing who you want to be with and the way the political world affects everyone. It had really realistic and intriguing dialogue and a strong ensemble. I really liked it.

I really liked the first scene between Ellen and Judy (Kelli Walker), Ellen's friend who is an aid worker with refugees from Sierra Leone in Guinea. Judy has come to crash at Ellen's place in New York on her way to her mother's funeral. I think this scene shows a lot about the relationship between Ellen and Judy because Ellen wants to help Judy but is also sort of constantly annoyed with her. Judy isn't exactly the person you'd expect to be helping all these refugees; she's very sarcastic and cut off from emotion. Even though Ellen is the person that is more deeply interested in what is happening in the political world, Judy is the one actually doing things to try and stop the bad things in the world. Even though Ellen thinks she is very progressive and liberal because she's always arguing with people, she's not doing anything to help progress the nation. Judy thinks people shouldn't be focused on the politics themselves but on the trouble politics is creating, which I think is really true, and I'm glad that the play addresses this. Judy is the less flawed character in the situation, even though she is less easy to get along with. I think this is really great storytelling because it doesn't make it so you are just rooting for one character and not others. All the characters in the play are flawed in some way but they are also easy to empathize with.

I think Amy and Ellen had a special relationship; they really clicked together. The only problem was that Ellen was also in love with her current partner, Danny. I think she gets a lot from each person, which is sad for her because she has to leave one of them behind. If she chooses Amy, she leaves behind her chosen family--Danny, his sister Kayla (Adrienne Matzen), and Kayla's wife, Laurie (Erin O'Brien). If she chooses Danny, she leaves behind a person who is basically like her, loves being with her, and who she has an intellectual and romantic relationship with. All we see of the blossoming of Amy and Ellen's relationship is their first meeting, kiss, and the suggestion that they have sex. I think the way Ellen starts the relationship with Amy is important because if she had sex and then went home and told Danny about it, I wouldn't think very well about her because she didn't talk it over with her partner before she acted on her impulses. If she was offered the option, went home and talked it over with her boyfriend, and then came back to act on her original impulses, I would think better of her because her boyfriend would have given his consent. The play isn't really clear about which happened, which makes it hard as an audience member to decide if she is right.

The scene that introduces Tessa (Samantha Newcomb) was very compelling because you meet a new character who has very different views from everyone else in the show. Tessa is Judy's niece, and Judy is now her full-time guardian. She comes from a tiny town and she is now visiting New York and she finds out that the people who have been showing her around the city--Kayla and Laurie--are lesbians and she is very surprised and slightly grossed out. She really likes Kayla and Laurie as people, but she let herself get distracted from how much she liked them by who they were attracted to. She also disagrees with them about George W. Bush, who she thinks is actually helping the U.S. This scene made me think about 9/11 in a different way. I hadn't realized that a lot of people were scared of what would happen if Bush wasn't president anymore. And even though people were in small towns who were probably not going to be the target of terrorist attacks, they were still terrified that something could happen to them. You see how scared people were, and you see where they were coming from when they reelected Bush because they thought that he could "help" them feel safe. But they weren't really thinking about the people who were in 9/11 or the people who were actually being hurt by Bush's decisions. It is a good illustration of how people hurt themselves by cutting themselves off from what is actually there because they are thinking too much about what they are supposed to be scared of and not enough about what they should be doing to feel safe. They could do that by looking at the actual situation of a loving relationship between two women instead of their ideas about it, and looking at the fact that terrorists don't represent all of Islam instead of just lumping everyone in a country or religion together. The scene wasn't all really deep; there was also a section about how much Danny wanted congee. It was really funny because everyone else was like, congee is really the thing you want Tessa to take away from this trip to New York? It was hilarious how he kept trying to defend his opinion of how amazing this Chinese rice porridge is.

People who would like this show are people who like in-depth looks into politics, stories about complicated relationships, and congee. I think that people should definitely go see this show. I think it has a really involving story with a talented ensemble. It made me think about what it was like to be alive at the turn of the century. This show reminded me a lot of how life is right now. And it is sad that we are kind of reliving this situation.

Photos: Paul Goyette