LAJ ARTICLES

Here Comes the Night: Theatre Review and Analysis

The personal is political. If that sounds like a poster board photographed on Capitol Hill before January 22,1973, then you know your activism parlance. A rallying cry from the 1960s, “the personal is political” could be dusted off and reappropriated in accord with the battle lines being drawn across modern cultural warfare.

Whether anthropologists mark the past eight years of American politics, or the past 20 of Western civics, chronicling the rise of social media, the lowering of attention spans, algorithms and smartphones that amplify a toxic engagement cycle, litigious online identities, and the demise of public discourse, all prove how germane that sentiment is. Private issues have political implications. The personal is political.

That is the topography Lisa Kenner Grissom’s new play ‘Here Comes the Night‘ arrives in. A polemic, scorched earth vilification of the opposition so contemptuous that half of us want to leave the country, while the other half wants the door to slap them in the ass on their way out.

Delayed by a week due to the fires in Los Angeles, ‘Here Comes the Night‘ opened last week at the Moving Arts Theatre with a cautionary note on the program. “This play takes place in LA and mentions the impact of the wildfires.” I can practically hear Jerry Seinfeld’s mom in my head. “You took your date to see a play about an abortion set against the backdrop of the wildfires? What, you couldn’t find any about mass deportations?”

To be fair, my editor offered me a review of ‘Death of a Salesman‘ which I declined based on familiarity. Besides, like Grissom, I too appreciate finding levity in uncomfortable circumstances. If you were worried that her new play is going to hit you over the head with identity politics let me reassure that it never does. ‘Here Comes the Night‘ delivers an unflinching look at a woman’s right to grapple with her own decision to terminate a pregnancy in ways that acquaint the audience with an item in short supply. Empathy.

I suppose no amount of postponement could satisfy the urge to steer wide of the flames that threaten us. The real fires, still burning as the show began, frame the metaphor that we can’t sit idle and wait for rain to save us. Besides, something is always going to be on fire.

Whether it’s gender identity, class, race, sex, sexual orientation, or nationality, any culture war cryptographer could begin comfortably extracting the fault lines beneath the slogan popularized by second-wave feminists and anti-war activists at the end of the 1960s. Except to broaden it to that degree renders the message meaningless because, of course, the personal is political. Duh.

So, what did it mean back when they coined it?

Aligned against patriarchal repression, student-age feminists of the late 1960s rallied around the slogan; forever bonding the intrinsic (and uphill) struggle of female empowerment into something that was expressly political. The tangible momentousness of that era of activism produced female-health clinics, rape-crisis centers and shelters for battered women.

The late 1960s counter-cultural experiment helped create real world solutions to actual suffering. It also created a framework, or vocabulary so disparaged by the Right, and so worried about by the center; commonplace words such as manifest, affirmation, privilege, self-care, and healing by speaking your truth, and ‘safe spaces’ became wholly rejected practically as an aural reflex as a type of demagoguery. One of the characters in ‘Here Comes the Night‘ calls it “New Age stuff” and reacts as though vocabulary alone were nails screeching along a chalkboard. Which, to be fair, for some people it is.

Second-wave feminism ushered in a new political vernacular, and, unfortunately, a backlash from the hegemony who felt threatened by it. Language plays a large role in ‘Here Comes the Night.

Maggie’s old friend Olivia, an environmental advocate married to a musician, invites her to spend the weekend at her hillside home to help her through the termination of a first-term pregnancy. Maggie (Julia Manis) isn’t sure that her profession, as either a yoga instructor, live-in nanny, or social media influencer, qualify her for the role. She has a lot of questions that Olivia (Meeghan Holaway) is not ready to answer, at first. “Why me?” she asks.

Olivia has been keeping tabs on Maggie, mostly because Maggie is an oversharer on Instagram, but keeps her own autobiographical details private. She’s what the kids, and her friend Maggie would call a lurker. The comic juxtaposition of these two characters on opposite poles of the spectrum to what degree they are willing to use their phones as a means to publicize their lives, thoughts, and emotions is both a running gag and a pivotal story point.

Olivia has told Maggie what their weekend together is reserved for, but little else. Grissom’s dialogue draws out the two women’s shared history and their path to this moment that allows for them to reacquaint themselves with each other as the audience finds their own footing.

Appearances, like social media, can be deceiving. Because of her daily content drip Olivia seems to know more about Maggie’s life, but for all the magnanimous, ethereal, spoken words of acceptance and grace to our goddess Gaia the audience is in on the bit. Maggie, or “Maggs” as Olivia calls her, stages them. The affirmations (we see her recording on her phone multiple times) feel about as real as the romantic aspirations of the cast of ‘The Bachelor.’ “Fake it till you make it.” Olivia tells her. Which Maggs comically rewords with an addendum to defang the word “fake.”

Olivia, or “Liv” as Maggie calls her, shares a home in the hills with her husband, a musician who is away on tour. The house survived a wildfire in part because of the scrubs that Liv planted there. As Maggs marvels at the charcoal-colored hillside and preens for her camera Liv informs her that no plant is completely fireproof; some plants have qualities that make them less vulnerable to fire. Liv has planted roots in the hopes of creating her own safe space, literal and figurative. That ingenious idea seems worth publicizing online to Maggs, but she can’t push her friend into tooting her own horn. Whether or not the symbolism stirs any envy in the “influencer” goes without notice.

Both friends share that they never wanted children, with a few reservations. Both have to admit that the pressures of social media have made the accoutrement of smiling baby faces a more attractive fiction than they would have allowed in the years before. Imagine how useful of a prop a toddler could be for an influencer trying to raise their follower numbers!

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Julia Manis as Maggie, Meeghan Holaway as Olivia

But a funny thing happens as night, and the hour to take the first round of Mifepristone, approaches. Maggs’ “online” personality recedes as Liv’s aloof responses become more and more direct. Though these two women are not the closest friends, and may never be, they are exactly who the other person needs at this precise moment.

Meeghan Holaway’s performance as Olivia is note-perfect as she has to deliver lines that sound resolute and well-planned though we know from her demeanor that she is anguishing. She is holding it all together but wants to let go of some of the rope, even if she isn’t ready to.

As Maggie, Julia Manis gets to play a character whose facade is cracking in the opposite direction. On Instagram she has anything and everything that she is willing to “manifest on her own personal journey” but we all know that isn’t an accurate depiction of a person’s life.

A third act confession is telegraphed early on and doesn’t quite feel necessary, though it does scan as realistic. Without spoiling the “betrayal” I would argue that the epilogue flattened the emotional heights of the story. Does the story’s arc need closure after such an ardent path was travelled? Though I’m not sure what side of the big tech debate Grissom lands on, the play seeds enough incongruity to leave the audience questioning it.

Don’t be misled by my interpretation. Social media is a part of the story and not the villain. The algorithm just makes the bullying and the intimidation feel closer than it has ever been. But even a scorched landscape can endure, defend, and be reborn if you know what roots to plant, and where to plant them. If anyone had not felt the erosion of trust on their social platforms before then the sight of the tech billionaires lined up at the inauguration like patriarchs in Westeros to see King Geoffrey crowned should give them some. AI has made Google Search inert, populated social media with bots, and spun misinformation to the millions of people who use tools like ChatGPT or Llama.

Would the tech oligarchy use their media platforms to inform on women seeking abortion in the 12 states that have already made it criminal? It isn’t as alarmist as it might sound. Let’s just say that one of the characters should think harder about what videos are appropriate to share with the world.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022 ended 50 years of federally protected women’s rights. By tossing the decision back to the domain of the states the court has endangered the lives of women, to say nothing of dignity. That is not hyperbole. How many have died from miscarriages as their doctors dithered? And I haven’t even mentioned the anti-abortion legislation that was introduced last week meant to intimidate health care professionals.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is never mentioned in ‘Here Comes the Night’ because it doesn’t have to be. It isn’t the elephant in the room. It is the room.

Grissom and Director Dana Schwartz don’t have to remind you of the societal impact of federal law because what matters most to their story is the human lives caught underneath it; of the community, support, and love two people can share just being by being present and seen.

Barely friends anymore, and yet these two women chose each other to be there for the most unwieldy nights of their lives. They don’t have to be lock-step with one another for every decision—even the life-defining ones—because those decisions are personal, and, though I need not remind you, political.
‘Here Comes the Night‘ is now playing at the Moving Arts Theatre. Performances are scheduled through Feb. 17. info@movingarts.org

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