Meeghan Holaway and Julia Manis (Photo by Mae Koo Photography)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Moving Arts
Thru Feb. 23
RECOMMENDED
On January 23, a New York Times article revealed that Facebook and Instagram had blocked or hidden the accounts of many top abortion pill providers. After the Times reached out to Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, those accounts were allegedly restored. That’s ironic, considering that the accounts were blocked mere days after Trump’s inauguration. It’s even more ironic when we consider that Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive for Meta, had recently vowed to loosen speech restrictions on the sites.
First produced last July for two nights only as part of the She Arts LA Festival, playwright Lisa Kenner Grissom’s two-hander, Here Comes the Night, has been restaged by Moving Arts with a new director and new cast in a production that is more relevant than ever.
Along with reports about the suppression of abortion drug providers, Grissom’s drama about a woman who intends to use drugs to end her pregnancy is particularly apropos, while the play’s setting— an L.A. canyon recently ravaged by wildfires— is eerily prescient.
After years of scrupulously preventing pregnancy, Olivia (Meeghan Holaway), now on the verge of menopause, learns that she is pregnant. It’s a shocker at her time of life, especially since she and her aging rock star husband, now a drunk reduced to tribute concerts, have never wanted children. Feeling that a baby would trap her in her doomed marriage, she orders abortion pills.
Enter Maggie (Julia Manis), Olivia’s younger friend, a self-absorbed wannabe influencer who is trying to monetize her posts. If she gets up to 10,000 views, she might make a little bank. Meanwhile, she’s couch-surfing at a couple’s house and acting as primary caregiver to their seven-year-old son.
Once close during their club-hopping days, the two women have been largely out of touch for the past several years. However, Olivia doesn’t want to go through her intended procedure alone and thinks upbeat, energetic Maggie may be the perfect person to help her through her ordeal. She hadn’t reckoned on just what a pill — no pun intended — Maggie has become in the interim, nor on the fact that Maggie has her own agenda for their weekend — namely, to dissuade Olivia from having the abortion.
In an unobtrusive staging, director Dana Schwartz lets her actors off the chain in a dramatic unfolding, while Mannis and Holaway deliver performances of shattering emotionalism.
Stripped to its essence, Night could have easily devolved into a blatantly politicized “message” play. Instead, it becomes a luminous reflection on female friendship. Grissom’s play cuts to the heart of the essential pact that women have shared since the cave — the help they have given one another not only during the life-and-death exigencies of birth, but also in ending unwanted pregnancies.
Could you produce Here Comes the Night in a red state? Doubtful. And yet, even in progressive California, the future of such unflinchingly honest art remains uncertain. At a time when women’s rights are being ruthlessly dismantled, state by state and step-by-step, Grissom’s play feels both necessary and urgent.
Moving Arts, 3191 Casitas Ave., L.A. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun.; 4 p.m.; Mon., 8 p.m. thru Feb. 23. movingarts.ludus.com Running time: one hour and 25 minutes with no intermission.
