Theatreguide.London
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The Theatreguide.London Review
In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic
forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted
by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others
by streaming new shows. Until things return to normal we review
the experience of watching live theatre onscreen.
The
Wolves
Lincoln
Center Theater Summer 2021
The ideal
audience for this play would be parents of teenage girls, because the
message is that the kids are all right.
New York's
Lincoln Center Theater continues to fill the imposed gap in production
by putting archive videos of past shows online. Here Sarah DeLappe's
2017 play is an almost plotless picture of an American high school
girls' soccer (i.e. football – there are jokes about the rest of the
world calling it by the wrong name) team.
In a string of
training sessions and pre-game warm-ups the girls stretch and practice
while chattering about anything from world affairs to local gossip.
Writer DeLappe, director Lila Neugebauer and the cast capture a very
attractive image of not-fully-formed, occasionally callow but
essentially good kids coping with the ordinary and extraordinary crises
of being teenagers.
They win some
games and lose some, deal with fitting a new girl into the team and
losing one to injury, learn by trial-and-error how to joke and not go
too far, and cope with a death among them.
Except for the
last, none of these things really shake them because, as the play shows
us, their friendship, their dedication to the game – they really do work
hard at training – and their inherent mental and emotional health carry
them through.
One way in
which the play is not fully successful is in individualising the girls.
There's the bossy one, and the new one, and the not-too-bright one, and
so on, but the differences are minimal, and when at the end we learn
that one has died I couldn't tell which it was, even with the rest
onstage before me.
But that, of
course, is at least partially intentional, as the play is more about the
general sense of the group than any individuals – the girls' names are
rarely mentioned, and they are identified in the cast list only by their
uniform numbers.
One result of
that is that none of the excellent adult actresses really stand out. And
if they are only intermittently successful in conveying a sense of
adolescents, one of the play's points is how unexpectedly adult the
girls can be.
This is one of
those rare and surprisingly satisfying plays in which nothing seems to
be happening and yet we come away with a good feeling that all is well.
The kids are all right.
Gerald Berkowitz
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