The Wolves depicts the turbulent emotional lives of nine high school girls on an indoor soccer team. The play by Sarah DeLappe is an excellent choice for a college theater program. In the absorbing production at Saint Louis University, the cast members are young enough to look convincingly like high schoolers but have the training required to act convincingly, too.
The play is a series of scenes in which the players warm up for their games. The setting is an indoor field with an artificial playing surface. The audience is on two adjacent sides of stage in Ryan Sherman’s scenic design for the Kranzberg Black Box Theatre. Sherman cleverly extends the field by angling the rear wall upward and covering it with the same artificial turf as the floor. The slant is helpful when the players kick the ball around, which they do with impressive accuracy. The production’s coach for soccer skills is Haley La Joie.
To capture the turbulence of teenage minds, DeLappe employs simultaneous conversations with overlapping lines. In the opening scene, the topics range from feminine hygiene products to the Khmer Rouge. The competitiveness of the young athletes is clear from the start.
Taking in all the dialogue isn’t possible but isn’t necessary to understand how personalities and relationships evolve over the course of a season.The audience has gotten to know the team quite well by the time one of the players has a serious injury, a college scout comes to a game, and a tragedy strikes the team out of the blue.
The players do not use their names in the dialogue. The audience tells them apart by the numbers on the blue uniforms chosen by costume designer Lou Bird. Making all the right socks white and all the left socks blue was a nice touch.
The director of this production, SLU professor Nancy Bell, played a soccer mom (the one adult part) in the first local staging of The Wolves. Under Bell’s knowing direction, the SLU actors turn in fully committed and highly communicative performances. The cast includes:
- Abby Rellinger as #13
- Celeste Gardner as #25
- Madelin Wysocky as #2
- Angela Menjivar as #00
- Lauren Tubbe as #11
- Frankie Haefner as #8
- Morgan Schindler as #46
- Madeline Chatham as #7
- Briana Nash as #14
- Grace Wallis as the soccer mom
Helen Ratcliff, listed in the program as the swing, did not have to perform on the night I attended.
The fine technical work included contributions from technical director Joe Stafford, lighting designer Denisse Chavez, sound design Cameron Shoeck, composer Marshall Self, and hair and makeup designer Lucie Ramsey.
—Gerry Kowarsky
Photo by ProPhotoSTL
From the left, Frankie Haefner as #8, Lauren Tubbe as #11, Angela Menjivar as #00, Morgan Schindler as #46, and Madelin Wysocky as #2 in The Wolves.
