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Review: The Wolves // Ad Astra

Written by Grace Wilson

The whole premise of theatre is to give life to words. To take words allocated to a book and page and act them out for a live audience. That’s what drives a performance and keeps the audience engaged - giving life to a work that may not seem like a work that traditionally needs to be performed.

The Wolves follows the story of a girls indoor soccer team as they navigate big questions and wage tiny battles with all the vigour of a pack of adolescent warriors. A portrait of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for nine American girls who just want to score some goals.

Ad Astra’s production of The Wolves finds itself tugged in two directions - brilliance and drab. The brilliance of the production is the production itself - from the direction to the strong performances put on by the actors. Dialogue was delivered in a way that was fun and loud, bickering and back chatting as girls that age do, and mannerisms matched that of teenage girls. 

Standout performances were delivered from Malika Savory, showing a varied and wide range of emotions and character development throughout the play, and Emma Black, who nailed the teenage girl-esq characterisation from the get go. However, the ensemble held this show as a team, together - each actor was a standout but together they were truly a rowdy girls soccer team. Featuring Chelsea Doran, Maddi Jane Romcke, Shanay De Marco, Aimee Duroux, Madeline Armit, Tanika Kane-Potaka, Sharnee Tones, Emily Marszalek, Stella T.Page and Doll Hunt the ensemble was packed with incredible talent.

In this intimate theatre setting, Caitlin Hill managed to bring the world of soccer to the audience in an extremely effective way. This play, despite being ‘conversational’, was driven by hard-hitting movements and eye catching action. Even with a few actors being noted as injured prior to the performance beginning, it was impossible to tell who was. The way movement was used, from stretching and soccer drills to a dance number to Bad Girls by M.I.A, gave so much life to this piece.

Composition & Sound Design by Justin Harrison supported this performance in every aspect and added vibrancy and life to different scenes and scenarios, along with lighting design by Cale Dennis. It was clear from watching this production that the crew knew exactly what they needed to do to add depth to this show, and they did so with precision and talent. The creatives behind this show brought as much life to the work as the performers did, which was brilliant to see

An interesting choice for this production was choosing this script to work with. The play itself is extremely multifaceted and seems to be attempting to tackle as many issues as it possibly can. From the get go, social issues drive this text and mentions of genocide and child abuse are commented on and debated by the girls. Before any of the audience can try and grapple with the subtext of this discussion, the script drops the topic and moves on to it - cocking a gun but never firing. Although this could be a commentary on how younger people flutter from topic to topic, it made the piece dissatisfying and confusing. Teenage girls talk, and talk they do, but this is not real life but a play that is trying to communicate a moral message and/or meaning. Tying up loose ends or at least alluding to some sense of the matter would have been a better ending to this script, but this is not an issue of the performance itself but as the script alone.

Despite the messiness of the text itself, Ad Astra took ran with it. As mentioned previously, the text is called conversational for a reason but it almost doesn’t feel that way due to the fantastic design elements and direction from the team. The quality of this production could easily be toured, and could work on almost any size or setting of theatre. Overall, The Wolves at Ad Astra was captivating, fun and confronting, and shows that what really makes theatre brilliant!

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