The Howland Company and Crow’s Theatre/ The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, directed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, Guloien Theatre, Streetcar Crowsnest, Oct. 9 to Oct. 27. Tickets available at crowstheatre.com.
It just so happens that this month there are two plays with large casts that deal with sports teams. First up is Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, which details an Under 17 girl’s soccer team, and is the subject of this review. At the end of the week, Anosh Irani’s Men in White opens, and chronicles the goings-on in a men’s cricket team. That review is forthcoming. Of interest for both, of course, is how each playwright builds a plot around the personalities of the team’s players, given the sheer number of actors involved.
First for some background on DeLappe and The Wolves. (And shame on the producers for not including one word about the playwright in the program.) DeLappe, 26, is the daughter of a visual artist and a photographer/poet. She’s currently a graduate student in the MFA program at Brooklyn College. She also teaches playwriting. The Wolves, her first play, premiered Off-Broadway in 2016 to a sold-out run. It was immediately revived for another Off-Broadway sold-out run, before transferring to the A-List Lincoln Centre in 2017. It won one prestigious playwriting award, and was nominated for four others, including being short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times voted The Wolves as one of the best 25 plays in the last 25 years. In other words, The Wolves is coming to Toronto with major legs.
Jareth Li’s set and lighting are simple — artificial turf and some stadium lights. The play takes place in an indoor arena, somewhere in the American mid-west, and the six scenes occur during warm-ups for The Wolves’ Saturday games. Each scene is separated by thundering music (courtesy of sound designer/composer Deanna H. Choi), and stylized soccer poses (crafted by costumer/movement coach Sarah Doucet). The warm-ups, the heart of the play, allow audiences an inside look at the mostly mundane, desultory conversation that occurs while the girls do their stretching exercises.
DeLappe has been universally praised for giving voice to teenage girls. She is quoted as saying she wanted to present these teenagers as complicated people “who weren’t just girlfriends or sex objects or manic pixie dream girls”. Their conversations roam from the merits of putting a 90-year-old Cambodian perpetrator of genocide on trial, to having their periods, to gossip about relationships with boys. They also have big dreams about being scouted during the upcoming College Showcase. On the way, DuLappe touches on eating disorders, lesbian relationships and abortion. Some hurtful things are said, secrets are revealed, some girls are meaner than others, but there is always someone who tries to pull the team together.
For me, DeLappe’s greatest gift is revealing character. The nine team members are listed by shirt numbers, and at the beginning, they are just a jumble of words. By the end of the 85-minute play, we know who each girl is, and there are strong personalities on stage.
What follows is just “a tip of the iceberg peek” as to who the players are. #25 (Rachel Cairns) is the sure and confident captain who runs the team in place of the alcoholic coach (whom we never meet). She does, however, have a vulnerable side. #7 (Aisha Evelyna) is foul mouth, sexually precocious, and very ambitious as to her place on the team. The scholarly #11 (Ruth Goodwin) is clearly the smartest one there. She knows about world affairs and has a fund of factoids for every occasion. #2 (Annelise Hawrylak) manages to always say the wrong thing, but on the other hand, she tries to repair her own damage. #46 (Ula Jurecki) is the new girl. She is sophisticated, an excellent player, and lives with her hippie travel-writer mother in a yurt. Her task is to bury her light under a bushel and try to fit in. Armenian-ethnic #14 (Brittany Kay) is the quiet one, but is dragged along by #7’s wind tail. #13 (Latinx Heath V. Salazar) is loud, brash and cutting. (The actor also mumbles her lines which is very irritating.) #8 (Hallie Seline) gets the most laughs due to her outrageous comments. Clearly, she is not the sharpest tool in the toolbox. #00 (Amaka Umeh) is the highly intelligent goalie. A bit of an outsider, she certainly has her pulse on what is happening within the dynamics of the team. There is a tenth character, a soccer mom (Robyn Stevan), who appears briefly at the end.
Sure, there are stereotypes, but think back to your high school. It was probably filled with stereotypes. What saves DeLappe’s characterizations from the overly simple is what she builds into each girl’s personality through artfully contrived dialogue. These teenagers are believable. Life in the present time for them isn’t easy, be it their family, school or team relationships, and DeLappe puts those hardships front and centre through fragments of conversation. Those hints really matter, and audiences should look out for them. It should also be noted that these actors must be in great shape because their warm-ups are not a walk in the park by any means. Apparently, rehearsals took place on a soccer field. Although the acting overall is a bit uneven, the performances are very enjoyable. In fact, the play as a whole is enjoyable.
Director Lancaster is clearly a polymath. She just came off a brilliant performance in I Call Myself Princess earlier in the season, and here she is masterfully manipulating nine actors around the stage with aplomb. She is definitely someone to watch.
In a recent interview, DeLappe declared that she was never writing a play about teenage girls again. In fact, she is working on a play featuring an all-male cast set in a men’s washroom. Sic transit gloria mundi.
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