Presented in the round, it was – as someone who doesn’t actively follow sport – amusing to me to find terms such as ‘soccer’ lauded and ‘football’ scoffed at, with the same sort of respective derision and praise afforded to those terms the other way around on this side of the Atlantic. Football, of course, means something else entirely in the United States, though at least London audiences watching this production get to see a sphere-shaped ball (several of them, in fact, during training sessions) actually being kicked about.
Discussion of the Khmer Rouge and its activities were rather negligible, and yet convincing, because it was something some of the girls on the same team (its members are from different schools) had studied at school. Ultimately, however, the play is more engaging when its characters are discussing more personal matters, such as sustaining football injuries (yeah, I’m not going to call it ‘soccer’, even if they do, thank you very much), recovering from them, and what a suited man with a clipboard with a large Texas A&M logo on it could possibly be talking to their equally off-stage coach about.
In line with social media norms, some girls are quick to latch on to comments made by teammates and take them out of context. One girl is accused of being sympathetic towards the Khmer Rouge – from what I could gather, her actual point, which she never made because she was shouted down, was that a substantial sentence handed down to a senior figure in that regime decades later, such that the defendant was a nonagenarian at the time of sentencing, was effectively a de facto death sentence. There are examples aplenty, both political and personal, where someone either puts their foot in it or is otherwise all too quickly accused of something or other, with the team captain, played by Amy Cash, often stepping in, usually by trying to get the team to focus on training and tactics.
Some of her interventions were quite ridiculous – telling someone in a football team to stop swearing is a bit like telling the sun to stop shining. The play is not, in the end, so much about how to succeed in sport but rather on group dynamics in the first place. At least to begin with, it does this extremely well: several conversations are going on at once, with the team talking in subgroups about different things. Extreme characteristics separate one teammate from another: one vomits before every match, ostensibly because of anxiety. Another is so much of an outsider it takes considerable, and contrived, explanation on her part before anyone else understands what the deal is with her.
It can all come across as very random, the dialogue one minute making a crude joke about pregnancy, and the next minute a teammate is being emphatically ordered to “shut up” just for asking a reasonable question in a civilised manner. Perhaps the goal (so to speak) was to present conversations as they might really have taken place in the relative privacy of the training ground, with neither teachers, parents nor boyfriends within earshot. There were moments of brilliance, but there were also times when I struggled to maintain interest. A bit like a football match, I suppose.
Review by Chris Omaweng
The Wolves follows a suburban American girls’ soccer team over six Saturday mornings as they prepare for their games. We hear the girls engage in candid discussions of topics ranging from genocide and drugs to boys and literature, revealing their unique personalities despite being initially identified only by their numbers. As they navigate the challenges of friendship, girlhood, loss and identity, they each confront battles on and off the field. Will their experiences lead to a teenage dream or a nightmare?
CAST
#00 – Holly Faulkner
#2 – Frances Berry
#7 – Jacqueline Crain
#8 – Megan Davies
#11 – Lola Thatcher
#13 – Thea Mayeux
#14 – Julia Josephson
#25 – Amy Cash
#46 – Caroline Cromwell
Soccer Mom – Alexandra Charalambous
Written by Sarah DeLappe
Director: Ragan Keefer
Set Design: Fiona Tabastot
Costume Design: Roxanne Roberts
Lighting Design: Steven Cox
Sound Design: Anna Kidd
THE WOLVES
The Tower Theatre, 16 Northwold Road, N16 7HR
Wednesday 22 January to Saturday 1 February 2024
