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| Jayde Dowhy -Ainslie Bull - Eleanor Graham - Susan Brown and members of "The Wolves". |
Designed and directed by Chris Baldock -Assistant
Director: Steph Evans
Lighting Design and Projections by Rhiley Winnett - Stage
Manager: Seth Burr
Costumes & Props by Chris Baldock, Steph Evans, and
cast.
Lycan Cast – Eleanor Graham – Zara Huber – Jennifer
Noveski – Susan Brown – Ainslie Bull – Jayde Dowhy – Grace O’Mahoney – Eva
Loxley – Ruth Hudson.
Mockingbird Theatre Company – The Studio – Belco Arts –
Oct. 15 to Nov. 1, 2025.
Performance on October 16th – Lycan Cast reviewed
by BILL STEPHENS.
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| Grace O'Mahoney - Zara Huber - Susan Brown -Eleanor Graham -Eva Loxley -April Telfer - Ainslie Bull - Jennifer Noveski- Jayde Dowhy as "The Wolves". |
“The Wolves” is a one-act, 90-minute play, written by Sarah
DeLappe, set in an indoor Soccer field somewhere in suburban America during a 2016 winter, and premiered Off-Broadway in 2016.
A slice- of- life – drama, it follows the lives and concerns
of the members of a female High School soccer team, The Wolves, whose lives evolve
around their weekly warm-up sessions. During these sessions they share gossip
about their friends, world events and politics, confidences about their bodies,
and occasionally; long held secrets.
Each is identified simply by the number they wear on their
backs, and each is provided with a back-story by the author. Beyond these
guidelines, it is left to each actor to create a character that will hold the
interest of the audience.
Discovering that he had enough suitable talent to field two casts,
Director, Chris Baldock, did exactly that, in a canny move likely to entice his
audiences to return a second time to see how the play fares in the hands of a
different cast.
This review focusses on the performance of The Lycan Cast.
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| Members of The Wolves pose for the camera with orange quarters in their mouths. You'll need to see the play yourself to find out why. |
As is expected of a Baldock production, the design and presentation are impeccable, as it the casting, in which every actor looks exactly as you would expect of a teenage soccer team. Perhaps a little more enthusiasm for the warm-up exercises might have been expected, because it was hard not to imagine how The Matilda’s might have fared had they trained as unenthusiastically as this team, especially as the audience was meant to believe, later in the play, that the team was talented enough to attract talent scouts.
Because it is such an ensemble play, set in contemporary
times, much of the interest came from watching the choices made by each actor in
responding to the storyline set for their particular character. Appropriately for this production, the
director has guided each actor towards making their own decisions with their
responses to the dialogue and the situations.
This worked very well in achieving a naturalistic rhythm
used by contemporary teenagers to communicate with each other. However, unless
the theatregoer can hear and understand that dialogue it is difficult to become
engaged in the storytelling.
In this performance,
much important storytelling information was lost because of lines delivered too
quickly or too softly. Part of this was due to the construct of the play, which,
for much of the time, has actors delivering lines standing or seated in a
circle with their backs to the audience.
Therefore, no matter where one is seated, much of the
dialogue was lost by actors working hard to achieve naturalism, at the expense
of important story points almost impossible to decipher because the actors were
not adept at projecting that information.
For the less experienced actors in this cast, this is a
skill which they will hopefully work to perfect as this season progresses.
“The Wolves” is an
interesting play offering a thoughtful perspective on the lives and challenges
faced by contemporary teenagers, performed with sincerity by an engaging cast
already facing those challenges.
Photos by Chris Baldock.
