This Wide Night

This Wide Night is the reason I love theater.  Well, not the play specifically but what it represents.  Every so often a show will come along where everything works in perfect harmony: sound, lights, set, script, direction, acting, everything.  This Wide Night is one of those shows, and it was a hell of a way to end Seattle Public Theater's season.

The story takes place in the humble and poorly kept apartment of Marie (Emily Chisholm), who we come to learn is living on her own after spending time in prison.  When the lights come up we see her lounging in a sack chair, staring blankly at a TV, until a sudden knocking sends her into a panic.  However, the caller at her door turns out to be her harmless old cellmate, Lorraine (Christina Mastin).  At first she appears just to be checking in on Marie since she hadn't heard from her, but it quickly becomes apparent through some masterful use of subtlety that Lorraine is looking for a place to stay.  From there on, it's a convoluted mess in the best possible way.  Each has a lot of crap going on, and each are reaching out in their own way for help to deal with it.

There is a fascinating mother/daughter dynamic throughout the entire piece, and it's far from simple.  While the younger Marie can often slip into childishness, she often becomes the caretaker herself.  On the other hand Lorraine is an actual mother whose son was taken from her when she went to prison.  So while she can slip on the mom hat when Marie needs it, she has just as many problems and needs almost as much mothering.  These are two women struggling to grasp at a sense of family that left them behind, yet keep missing that their new family is right in front of them.  It's beautiful, and hauntingly poignant.

I do have to give a shout out to Kyna Shilling and the entire design/tech team, who put together a fantastic set, including an incredibly elaborate curtain made of hundreds of plastic water bottles.  Bravo, it looked pretty incredible.

As for the actresses themselves, a big bravo to them as well.  As the play is set in England there were some accent issues as there almost always will be, but for the work those two put into their characters, I really couldn't care less.  Emily Chisholm as Marie took us all the way from giddy joy to the edge of madness, while Christina Mastin as Lorraine was so masterful in her use of subtlety that I felt like the subtext was being spoken aloud.  Both presented to us a side of humanity we (hopefully) rarely see, and pulled no punches about it.

Overall, This Wide Night is a fantastic and deeply moving play that deserves to be seen, so go grab your ticket now.  Fair warning, you might also want to grab some tissues on the way too.

This Wide Night gets a 10/10.