Girls on the cusp of womanhood intrigue in ‘The Wolves’
As a man, watching “The Wolves” permits a glimpse into an unknown world of what makes adolescent girls tick. It’s a fascinating place, as it turns out, full of eerie similarities to the volatile landscape of teenage maleness (the F-bomb knows no gender) and yet filled with pungent differences.
Sarah DeLappe’s play, a 2017 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, makes its Central Florida debut in a production at Rollins College’s Annie Russell Theatre. Well, not quite at the Annie.
“It has been nine months since we last did a show for the general public, and it’s good to see half your faces,” said Chelsea Hilend, the theater’s marketing and box-office manager, to an opening-night audience of masked theatergoers carefully distanced on the Bert W. Martin Tennis Complex’s bleachers.
“The Wolves” is set in an indoor soccer stadium, but in deference to COVID-19 safety measures, at Rollins it’s outside on a tennis court. Nevertheless, the story rings true— sometimes frighteningly true— as DeLappe’s characters gossip, snipe and spar with that appalling unintentional cruelty of youth.
Director Marianne Di Quattro keeps the action— and dialogue— moving briskly as her performers create convincing characters not much younger than they are.
“The Wolves” doesn’t feature a conventional beginning and ending; rather, the lives and psyches of these soccer-playing teens— identified by their team jersey numbers— are explored in a series of vignettes that take place at matches during one memorable season.
Like No. 46, the audience enters the picture in the middle of these girls’ story. Most of the players have known each other for years, and home-schooled No. 46, played by Molly von Eschenbach with a delightfully optimistic mix of awkwardness and cluelessness, doesn’t endear herself to the group with her socially stunted ways. Kristen Edwards nicely conveys the adolescent brash confidence that often masks insecurities, while Sydney Pigmon rings true as a pal in her thrall. Rina Sukhraj does a fine job showing us the most girl-like character of these young people on the verge of woman hood.
Among their chatter about female hygiene products, these characters are interested in big concepts, as a conversation about a Khmer Rouge leader reveals. In their unsophisticated way, while wondering how the internet works in Cambodia, they are simultaneously talking about justice and forgiveness. Howlong must someone be held accountable for an unwitting mistake, even a terrible one?
Watching that intriguing philosophical debate play out in the reality of the girls’ relationships is what gives “The Wolves” its bite.