After 15 years behind bars, Lorraine (Linda Reiter) is a free woman, and she immediately sets out to reunite with her former cellmate Marie (Aila Ayilam Peck). It’s just like old times, which comes as both a relief and a concern for the two formerly incarcerated women struggling to rejoin society after imprisonment. This Wide Night by Chloë Moss is the story of a female friendship that was forged by unavoidable intimacy. Locked safely within the dingy walls of Marie’s studio apartment, Interrobang’s Managing Artistic Director Georgette Verdin joins Shattered Globe Theatre and taps into the lifesaving bonds that make it possible to survive life’s hardships.
Aila Ayilam Peck and Linda Reiter carry the weight of this two-woman play with remarkable skill and instinctive teamwork. Peck’s heartbreaking performance as an abandoned woman with a history of substance abuse has the power to pull the audience’s attention – until Reiter comes barreling onstage to break the tension with a hilariously jolting exclamation. Over the course of the play, the distance that has grown between the two after Marie’s release steadily closes. What at first seems like an almost comical inconvenience transforms into a codependent and deeply intimate relationship. Peck and Reiter establish a tragically beautiful connection that transcends their generational divide. Whenever one of them is missing from the stage, the world feels a little wrong.
