Wolf Play NYC Reviews and Tickets
About the Show
Production Covid-19 Safety ProtocolsShow-Score Member Reviews (129)
See it if this is truly Do Not Miss. Beautifully woven, gorgeous performances, heartbreaking and thought-provoking. Please go see this!
Don't see it if you want a regular play that is completely forgettable.
See it if Staging was just SO cool and quirky. The story was riveting and makes you think really hard on family dynamics.
Don't see it if You prefer a straightforward story.
See it if You like very theatrical staging and thought provoking issues.
Don't see it if If you want to see a light fluffy comedy.
See it if you're ready to be wowed by playwright Hansol Jung‘s Wilderesque examination of adoption & adaptation, family fusions & family fractures.
Don't see it if you like a straightforward story. Jung's wild script is prismatic & unafraid to jump from representational to presentational to puppets. Read more
See it if you can.
Don't see it if you like representative, excessively literal staging.
See it if Captivating & moving play where love makes a family for a non-traditional family. Great acting coupled with a great script.
Don't see it if If you prefer comedy or lighter play then skip this one.
See it if you like quirky shows that are fun, have something to say but aren't pedantic.This one is a real treat.
Don't see it if you don't like jumbled sets, non-linear plots, silliness.
See it if A child given away through a Yahoo message board -- heartbreaking. Great acting fleshed out the adults involved. This play will stay w/you.
Don't see it if You're not into small-theater productions, don't want something on a heavy subject
Critic Reviews (15)
“Though it excels in its engagement of the abstract, ‘Wolf Play’ remains grounded in a cruel reality.”
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“Both times I’ve seen ‘Wolf Play,’ at Soho Rep and MCC, I’ve felt out of breath by the end. Why? It tells you it’s fiction right away and keeps reminding you about that throughout, but instead of distancing you from the action, the gesture keeps you close.”
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“An extended magic-of-imagination opening monologue, spoken by Winter, the puppeteer, doesn’t quite work, but the rest of the piercing drama covers an astonishing amount of ground, carrying itself lightly when the terrain is most difficult.”
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“ ‘Wolf Play’ may touch upon hot-button issues, but it does so in ways that are both formally playful and emotionally stirring.”
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“Jung’s piece is as fun, playful, theatrical and funny as it is troubling and exposing...‘Wolf Play’ hits hard and breaks your heart for each character and what they’re struggling for and reminds you that the fantastical world the play has created around you may be ‘not what you think you see’ but ‘exactly what you think you see’ at the same time.”
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"The miracle is how playwright Hansol Jung and director Dustin Wills rattle our emotions and pierce our hearts even as they remind us, regularly and often flamboyantly, that they’re spinning a fictional tale."
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At the center of Jung’s play is a six-year-old Korean-born adoptee named Jeenu, who announces himself to the audience as “a wolf.” Jeenu is played by a puppet, operated by a voracious Mitchell Winter who translates the child’s wolf-like logic and observations to the audience. Needless to say, Jeenu’s family story elicits an ethical and emotional conundrum. Jung’s script crumbles the fourth wall, and director Dustin Wills’s Brechtian staging further eviscerates it in a habitat discombobulated from reality. It’s a space-time continuum, shared by the characters and audience, where the wolf’s opening monologue reminds the audience of the artifice yet allows them to be emotionally reeled in.
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"Performances from the ensemble are uniformly strong and suited to the production’s intimate scale...But casting a wolf as a protagonist becomes a tricky gesture when expressing inner feelings is limited to encyclopedic facts about the species...Wills’s production has the exuberant restlessness of a crayon drawing tacked to the fridge, chaotic but underlaid with a careful internal logic."
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