A pack of young she-wolves are roaming the Studio Theatre at The Rep these days. They’re energetic, sometimes focused but often with short attention spans, and very yappy. The Wolves, by Sarah DeLappe, is about a girls’ soccer team called the Wolves. They’re high-school-aged, playing in an indoor league, some of them long-time acquaintances.
The Rep is staging it stadium-style, two sets of risers facing each other across a strip of synthetic turf, giving lots of room for the bouncy young ones to stretch and run. A few folks in the front rows, in fact, ended up nudging balls back onto the field.
As it opens, it’s immediately obvious that this is no idealized picture of teen-aged girls. The crosstalk is of many things, from politics to gossip, views strongly held and loudly verbalized. Crosstalk is a keyword here. At a number of points in the play, several dialogues are going on at once, and we can’t follow all of them. In addition, there are lines that are addressed in the direction of half the audience and don’t make it to the other half, one of the dangers of such staging. I still have the feeling that there was a subplot that I missed almost completely. Obviously this hasn’t been a problem across the board – the play was a finalist for a Pulitzer.
It’s a series of scenes pre- or post-game through much of a season, with a difficult denouement. None of the characters have names; they’re referred to and addressed by jersey numbers. The team – or pack – is headed by Rachel Logue, strong and confident in her leadership. Esmeralda Garza’s goalie is, for the most part, silent but intensely focused and very watchable. There’s an air of queen bee around Keaton Whittaker, who has what a previous generation would have called potty mouth. The newcomer to the group, Mary Katharine Harris, is intriguingly played as she becomes more comfortable with her peers. Colleen Dougherty’s wide-eyed, yea, clueless, innocence is balanced by Maya J. Christian’s energetic, outspoken, if a little unfocused verve.
Director Melissa Rain Anderson gives us an honest picture of adolescent girls, no sweetening it up. That means there’s talk about sex, ranging from “What’s Plan B?” to physical mimicking, and a certain amount of disinformation. At times, it’s very funny – a tossed-off question, “Why were you watching a documentary?”, for instance.
The creative team includes scenic designer James Wolk, lighting designer John Wylie, sound designer Rusty Wandall and costume designer Marci Franklin, whose job of distinguishing between girls in uniforms makes an audience’s job easier.
It’s an interesting, different 90 minutes of theatre, but be prepared to have your attention whipped around at times.
Wolves
through February 3
Studio Theatre
Repertory Theatre St. Louis
Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts
130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves
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