| . | 08/17/2010
Wolves
By: Eugene Paul
 Linked together by the suggestion of a wolf, wolves, lupine behavior or even the suggested wolf, playwright Delaney Britt Brewer has written three related suggestions of plays, placed one after the other linearly and in time, but runs out of suggestions. All three plays have titles familiar to us from experiences of our own in fact or in mind: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Crying Wolf, A Wolf at the Door. How many of us have encountered that wolf in sheep’s clothing in our business dealings or in our sex lives…How many of us have cried wolf and seen the dismal aftermath…How many of us these days know under our skins that there’s a wolf at the door. So, then, playwright Brewer has fertile, mulched territory into which she might plant her plots, her schemes, her ideas. She plants a seedling in the third playlet but even that is much more the director’s gift than her own.
In our first play, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Caleb (Josh Tyson) and Kay ( Elizabeth A. Davis) are see driving through a beautiful wintry night. The beautiful wintry night is handsomely evoked by set designer Maruti Evans. The driving is instantly screwed up by having actor Tyson hold a little toy car in his hands, obviously not his own idea from his slightly embarrassed air. He, as Caleb, and Kay, are unhappily rehashing the events at the party they just left, as much displeased with themselves as with their friends when their vehicle – the one they’re supposed to be riding in – hits something. Quick cut to party. (Relatively speaking.) Friends Pierce (Richard Saudek) and Roslyn (Sarah Baskin) are bitchily slicing and dicing them up, their work, their looks, their relationship. Caleb and Kay have been together for three years, have said “I love you” to each other innumerable times.. Cut to the stalled car in the wintry night. The object in the road their car hit is a wolf, now badly hurt wolf. Yes, we all know that it is nigh on impossible to find a four legged wolf in New York but the dear, little creature dressed in a curly paper suit is positively cute, changing all the dynamics playwright Brewer implies evidently dealing with a great, dangerous beast. And Kay and Caleb are supposedly freezing and in a quandary: what to do? Kay’s suggestion: Kill it; you’ve got to put the great beast out of its misery. Caleb demurs. Kay offers the shovel in the trunk of the car. And back to the party. Where Caleb gets high. Back to wolf dying. Cutely. Party again. Wolfside again. Kay and Caleb have come apart.
In playlet two, Crying Wolf, we meet Julie (Megan Hart) and her brother, Elliot (Doug Roland) at night at a freezing lakeside, Julie having been dumped by her girl friend, Sasha and contemplating the end of the world if not the end of her life. Or both. Elliot wishes she weren’t gay so she wouldn’t be hurt so much. There is no apparent wolf until Sasha (Julie Fitzpatrick) appears wearing what looks very like wolf’s fur around her neck and wrists, then vanishes, saying she probably wasn’t there, really.
By now, we are wary of another broken off fragment in play three but there’s been a dramatic rescue by director Mike Klar. No more paper wolf. There’s a child called Wolf, played by Vikki Vasiliki Eugenis, who is the child of Caleb and Sasha and is communicated with by notes as her parents dash, dash, dash in their busy, busy lives. Here playwright Brewer’s dialogue brilliantly reflects the glittering emptiness of the parents who will bring up a child, Wolf or no Wolf, just like them. The last little play is the biggest of them all. I liked all the actors. Richard Saudek and Vikki Vasiliki Eugenis stood out.
59E59 Theater. 59 East 59th Street, near Park Avenue. Tickets: $18. (Discounts). Tue, Wed 7:30 pm. Thu-Sat 8:30 pm. Mat, Sun 3:30 pm. 212-279-4200 or http://www.a59e59.org.
|
|