Theatre Review of The Wolves by Sarah Delappe

 

Saw Sarah Delappe’s play titled The Wolves last Sunday afternoon in the small studio at Theatre Cedar Rapids. It premiered Off Broadway in 2016 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in that year. It has been a popular choice at educational theatres for some time because of its cast of ten women and its treatment of the growing pains of young adolescent girls.

Set in the pre-game warm-ups for a female high school soccer season, the piece focuses on the girl’s comments interspersed with their pre-game warm-up exercises. We hear about their sexual problems, menstruation, the integration of new girls onto the team, and ultimately, an injury and tragedy.

Unfortunately, the production falls considerably short of the serious themes presented. The chosen production style was a tunnel with the audience divided into two facing sets of seats. I suspect this was to mirror the competitive stadium sides during matches. The director put his cast into exercise circles a great deal and that managed to give as much face time to the unpeopled sides as to the peopled sides. This meant that every patron saw ¾ of the show in either profile or full back. In our seating position to the right of center in a corner where there was no entrance at all, we had even less full-face contact with the actors.  

This might have worked out if the actors had sufficient vocal strength to be heard and understood even when turned away. I know that these days young actors expect to be miked, but sufficient volume should not be a problem in a theatre that seats barely a hundred people.  More lines were mumbled and spoken to the floor than not. The constant movement and ungainly twisted exercise positions also did not help with breath support. This show desperately needed a vocal coach.

Had I not seen a previous production of the piece, I’m not sure I would have been able to follow the narrative. In one scene the goalie spent scads of energy throwing a ball against the back wall and running laps until exhausted. The folks next to me, who apparently did not hear much of the dialogue that came before, were totally mystified as to what was going on. The death of one of the team’s members in a car crash had been missed. Finally, the big ending featuring the arrival of the mother of the dead girl bringing a bag of oranges, was squashed by lights going down too soon for us to register its importance. She had brought oranges before to help spur the team on earlier. A better and more emotionally riveting lighting choice at the end would have brought the lights down slowly until only a pin spot on the bag of fruit for the team was lit. Then a fast blackout. 

I cannot recommend this production.

The Serpent Under by Bonnie Macbird

 

The Serpent Under by Bonnie Macbird

The Serpent Under is another of the multitude of titles offered as knockoffs of the exploits of the world’s most famous detective—Sherlock Holmes. They have been appearing regularly ever since the original Arthur Conan Doyle copyrights expired.

In this adventure of Holmes and Watson, Bonnie Macbird, a transplant from California who now lives in London, takes on murder, snakes, and gypsies. A wealthy young royal retainer named Jane Wandley has been found strangled in Windsor Palace. Her face has been garishly tattooed with a snake swallowing his own tail. Holmes is summoned to the palace to investigate. The back story takes us into a fatal fire on the woman’s father’s estate that killed a Gypsy woman and her child. There are suspects and additional bodies aplenty as the story unfolds.   Holmes and Watson do their best to identify the killer in the face of an impatient Queen, bombs, suffragettes, and a deadly King Cobra.

Macbird sticks to the Victorian period for her setting and does a good job of parodying the Holmesian style of questioning to deduce and then confront the miscreant. She knows her London streets and weather and evokes the Victorian atmosphere with competence.

This is a pleasant read if you have run out of the original stories and novels.

I give it a 4 out of 5    

Death Comes in Threes book review

 

Michael Jecks, Death Comes In Threes

I enjoy historical mysteries. They are a fun way to read a popular genre while getting a refresher on the ambiance of whatever period they are set in. to that end, I picked up a copy of Michael Jecks’ Death Comes in Threes on the recent acquisition rack at our local library and found out rapidly that I had come upon a loser. It was touted as one of a series of Bloody Mary Tudor mysteries and was set in England in the late 1550’s. Mary is on the throne and Elizabeth I is waiting in the wings. 

The main character is Jack Blackjack, a resourceful low-life who lives easily in the lowest brothels as he does in gentleman’s residences. He is supposedly a secret assassin for the young Elizabeth but while defending himself from two murder charges he also manages to get himself seen as a supporter of Bloody Mary.

The narrative is first person and plods along through a revolving sequence of characters. Mostly we hear the story from Blackjack himself, but we also get chapters narrated by a bawdy housewife and his ostensible employer. The joking self-deprecating style gets tiresome quickly and the plot seems full of ridiculous coincidences and pasteboard minor characters. Even though the 16^th century London place details are accurate, they don’t make up for the less-than-convincing plot.  

About halfway through I started skipping whole passages without feeling deprived of anything. I should not have finished it, but I did.

I give it a 1 out of 5.