By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When we first meet The Wolves, they are already nipping at each other.
The young women are members of an indoor soccer team. As they stretch before a game, they talk, tease, and bicker.
No. 13 (Hennessey Bevins) mispronounces Khmer Rouge. No. 11 (Erica Rose Harmon) is chided for seeming sympathetic for a Cambodian war criminal. No. 7 (Nicole Line) laments her school hasn’t gotten to learning about genocide yet.
No. 46 (Hannah Hess), the new girl, chimes in that she’s been to Cambodia. Everyone else ignores her.
Across the circle players discuss feminine sanitary products, and why No. 2 (Rebecca Kuch), who comes from a religious family, still uses pads. That leads to No. 14 (amila Alejandra Piñero) offering to give her a tampon and sparks a raucous, off-color conversation about menstruation that also reveals something of the team’s competitive spirit. They want to beat the other team and top each other’s gross comments.
These girls want to win at life, and soccer. As the 90-minute play, “The Wolves,” unfolds it becomes evident that soccer is the easy part.
“The Wolves,” a 2017 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama written by Sarah DeLappe, opens tonight (Thursday, Feb. 28) at 8 in the Eva Marie Saint Theatre in Bowling Green State University’s Wolfe Center for the Arts. The play, directed by Emily Aguilar, continues weekends through Sunday, March 9. See showtimes and ticket information below.
The players are named only incidentally, their primary identity is by jersey number.
They range from the goalie 00 (Hanna Marie Felver), an overachiever in several areas who is so set on succeeding she throws up before very game, to 46, an only child who lives in a yurt in the country and is home-schooled by her free-spirited mother. The result is a certain lack of social graces that adds further fuel to the team’s fiery dynamic.
In the middle of all this is 25 (Mary Wheeler), the team captain. She stands is as an authority figure here, a position thrust on her by the team’s always hungover male coach. The low quality of the coaching would not be tolerated on a boys team, one player notes.
Except for Lauren Lash’s stunning tragicomic monologue as a soccer mom in the last scene, the adults stay off stage. This is about this circle of young women.
Their concerns feel so much more real than those of other plays attempting to explore the low-grade trauma of being a teenager.
The hot button issues — sex, gender identity, suicide, sexual assault, to touch on a few — course through the dialogue. They are, though, not so much hot button issues, but part of the fabric of these characters lives.
The anxieties and tears feel real, as do the smiles. Those are rarer and more fleeting.
This is not the expected sports drama about a team of underdogs triumphing against teams that are more advantaged. There is an element of that in the story of 46, but there’s little triumph even in her story.
These girls are largely privileged products of the country’s upper middle class. They are emblematic of the young women who as members of select teams sweep across soccer pitches across the country. Credit to Alyx Fisher who is served as movement coach with training her cast mates (she’s an understudy for No. 7) so they are believable when they put their feet on the ball.
That the actors, including Mikayla Fitzpatrick as No. 8, are just a few years older than their characters adds a level of authenticity. None of this seems acted. The Wolves are real. Eavesdropping on them in their circle as they casually reveal themselves, often thoughtlessly probing each other’s soft spots, can be uncomfortable. This reveals another layer of the game of life.
What lies underneath is not necessarily pretty, or comforting, but it is enlightening, and deeply moving.
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“The Wolves” by Sarah DeLappe is on stage at the Eva Marie Saint Theatre, Feb. 28, March 1 and 2 at 8 p.m. and March 2 and 3 at 2 p.m. and continuing March 7, 8 and 9 at 8 p.m. and March 9 at 2 p.m. Tickets purchased in advance are $15, $5 for students, and $10 for seniors. All tickets are $20 if purchased on the day of performance. Available at the Wolfe Center box office, online at bgsu.edu/arts, or by calling 419-372-8171.
