"The Wolves" at Marin Theatre Company

Marin Theatre Company photo by Kevin Berne

On a whim, we ran over to Mill Valley on Easter Sunday to see the current production of The Wolves, by Sarah DeLappe. It's a play about the members of a fairly elite, suburban, teenage girls' soccer team called the Wolves. As a parent of a teen daughter (who does not play soccer), I was interested to see what the play had to say about the lives of these teens.

The Play

This is an interesting play, in that it doesn't have a narrative line per se, though there is a timeline and there is action and plot development, but it's decidedly episodic. Also, considering it's about a soccer team, we mostly see warmups, rather than any actual game situations. So we get glimpses of the girls interacting with one another, from which we interpolate facts about their lives.

The technique is pretty effective, in that it leaves each of us to draw our inferences about what's happening, then later corroborates or refutes our surmises with further information. That part is pretty cleverly handled.

Initially the chaos of multiple conversations going on among a shifting grouping of girls doing stretches and warm-up exercises is a bit confusing, but ultimately the brain catches up, and it is a pretty accurate portrayal of the shifting, multi-threaded conversations that teens partake in.

I found it a bit odd that the players almost never use each other's names, but refer to each other by number. That works as a device in the script, but seems entirely unlike any teen girls I have ever known. This is particularly striking because most of these girls have played together for many years.

Also, the coaching deficiency is rather striking. I can understand having to hire a coach the team isn't thrilled with, but the degree of dereliction in this coach would never be tolerated on this kind of serious team.

But as a result of all this, we have a sort of artificially isolated group of girls which only occasionally devolves into some kind of "Lord of the Flies" scenario of youthful self-rule. Eventually the personalities and life circumstances of the individual girls seep through the numeric-uniform impersonality to give us a feel for who these girls are and what they're up to, individually and collectively.

The Performance

By setting the play in an indoor soccer league, we can justify having a smaller number of players (there are nine in the cast, plus a brief, late appearance by a soccer mom) and the small, bleak, artificially-turfed stage that passes for the indoor stadium. I thought they could have done a little more to dress up the set, but it functions.

The actors are all young women who can pretty much pass for older high-school students (they are supposed to be juniors). The only one who affirmatively seems "too old" for her role is the goalie (Betsy Norton), but she's quite good and one fairly quickly suspends disbelief on that score.

As one might expect, there are a range of skills and personalities portrayed among the team, and the actors do an effective job of establishing their individual personas as well as blending into the team. It's a little difficult to say with any certainty which little quirks might be acting deficiencies and which might be intentional acting choices, so in that sense I just go with the flow and decide that it's all acting and direction.

As it's really an ensemble piece, the individuals don't really particularly stand out (which is why I'm not calling any out by name). The device of having the Soccer Mom (Liz Sklar) arrive toward the end, although important to the plot, didn't seem to work very well. Her interactions with the team didn't seem authentic from either side.

Bottom Line

This is a good show. I wouldn't say it's an especially compelling piece of writing, though it is clever and skillful at times. And the acting isn't (and doesn't need to be) brilliant or showy. As noted, this is an ensemble piece that is about individuals playing as part of a team, not about any particular prima donna(s).

I thought it was all quite effective and interesting, if sometimes a bit contrived. Well worth seeing, especially if you want to know a bit of what the kids are up to these days.

The show runs for two more weekends, through April 15th.