Season Two
Which Wolf Is Which?
Curtain Up Review/ www.curtainup.comBy: Jenny Sandman
©Copyright 2003, Elyse Sommer, CurtainUp.
Robert O’Hara’s had a busy year in New York. He’s written and directed two new plays, American Ma(u)l and Booty Candy, and now he’s directed a new play by Sam Marks.
Billed as “an after after school special,” Which wolf is which? at HERE is less free-form than previous O’Hara offerings, but his influence is still crystal-clear.
Which Wolf is set in Brooklyn. Terrence is a young dumb street kid about to fail math and if so would flunk out of high school and sent back to a mysterious “work program” which inspires fear and dread in all the kids. The fact that Terrence is having an affair with the math teacher, Ms. Stern, thus far has not affected his grade. But ugly rumors are spreading, and most of the school knows about the illicit affair–including the shop teacher, Hank Rubin (a Gulf War vet), the assistant principal, and fellow students Ben and Alicia who are dating, but, much to Ben’s dismay, not yet sleeping together.
When the city makes budget cuts, and schools in Queens are forced to close, the boroughs erupt in riots. Armed soldiers are sent to escort the students home and patrol the streets. Terrence takes advantage of the chaos to do a little looting; Ben and Alicia have a date which takes them to the park because Ben’s sister won’t leave the apartment. They start making out in the midst of the roving gangs, only to be discovered by Mr. Rubin. And that’s when all hell breaks loose.
The play explores the eroticism and violence between the students and their teachers. The tension vis-à-vis the escalating danger outside. The students’ burgeoning sexuality is blatantly obvious.
Sam Marks is a powerful writer with an ear for street vernacular (“Are you like being serious now or are you like being weird?”) and subtle humor. The funniest scene occurs when Ben and his sister get high and talk about tuna. The characters are carefully and realistically crafted, and the story builds nicely right up to the very end. It’s at that point that the tight structure unravels. Instead of ending, the play just stops. Given the plot intricacies that led up to that point this is disappointing. This timely and image rich work deserves a better ending.
O’Hara has assembled an energetic cast. The actors, many of whom have been recycled from American Ma(u)l and Booty Candy, are somewhat lacking in chemistry but nevertheless work well together. Tiffany O’Hara’s Ms. Stern is a little wooden for a sexed-up math teacher, but Ephraim Benton is just right her paramour, Terrence, as is Joey Rich as the inept assistant principal. Steven Boyer’s Ben is the perfect bumbling, insecure teenager. He’s no match for Eve Berkson’s Alicia, a smart girl who’s determined to get into college and get out of Brooklyn. Though a bit stiff at first she lets go in her scene with Benton in which we see why Alicia is trying so hard to separate herself from her surroundings. As Tara, a paranoid misfit, Molly Pearson’ provides a lot of the comic relief and Chad Beckim is suitably creepy, especially when he starts having Gulf War flashbacks. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which are the adults and which are the teenagers, and that’s exactly as it should be.
O’Hara’s directorial instincts are surprising in their perspicacity. Sam Marks has the makings of a solid playwright. Taken together, on a bare stage with the simplest of set pieces (folding tables; a bean-bag chair) and lighting, he and Mr. O’Hara they’ve created a startling new play.
—
Show Business ‘The Performance Arts Magazine Since 1941′
By: Patrick Gallagher
August 5, 2008
Sam Marks’ Which Wolf is Which depicts a single day in the lives of a group of teachers and students from Brooklyn, beginning as the story of a model bridge-building competition. It concludes with Brooklyn being destroyed by terrorism, looting, and martial law. Promotional materials for Wolf, bill it as an “after-after school special,” but it has enough bite for a whole semester.
Some elements of Wolf are confusing. The city is in a sort of badly-damaged, post-apocalyptic condition; but this, in particular, does not feel entirely well thought out. If the city has been submerged in a mix of military occupation and gang warfare, with Prospect Park as one of its most turbulent hotspots, then how do two Brooklyn teenagers sneak in for a make-out session with such ease and nonchalance? If there are inconsistencies in the plot of Wolf, though, then that is partially to be expected from Marks’ approach to storytelling. While the story encompasses the city as a whole, Marks tells it through a series of scenes involving no more than three characters. Characters whisper isolated scraps of exposition in the form of rumor. The rumors conflict, and the characters upon whom we have to rely are permanently in various states of intoxication or neurotic distress. The paranoid atmosphere is so convincing that it’s easy to ignore when the ambiguity spreads into aspects of the story – such as the setting –where it probably wasn’t meant to go.
Not to be underestimated are the contributions of Robert O’Hara, whose direction maintains consistent levels of tension and unease while leaving room for some terrific comic moments. Wolf’sBrooklyn feels like a place where nothing is too horrifying to happen suddenly at any moment, and, consequently, much of what is funny in Wolf is also very scary. In that respect, O’Hara gets a lot of help from his cast. At one point, as Ephraim Benton’s misunderstood, possibly felonious, high school troublemaker prepares to steal a bicycle from a five year old, he delivers an incredible monologue with equal parts charisma, pathos, and pure, unrestrained greed. Ex-soldier/shop teacher Chad Beckim launches a one-man invasion into Prospect Park, decked out in his Gulf War finest, and can’t decide whether he wants to save his erstwhile student, or rape her—somehow, Beckim invests the character’s confusion with innocent charm. Tiffany O’Hara’s idealistic part-time teacher provides Wolf with an almost radiant locus of sanity and fairness – that is, until we see her decked out in a schoolgirl fetish costume, preparing to have sex with one of her own students.
Molly Pearson’s agoraphobic college dropout, Eve Berkson’s high school brainiac, Steven Boyer as the dork haplessly smitten with her, and especially Joey Rich’s imperious assistant principal all contribute vivid, complicated performances to the show’s strange, but harmonious mix of comedy and apocalypse. Wolf depicts New York City as mass hysteria and government fascism finally bludgeon to death its last, isolated vestiges of civil society and culture. In a way, however, Which Wolf is Whichpays a special sort of tribute to New York, somehow making its fall just as spectacular as its rise.
Some elements of Wolf are confusing. The city is in a sort of badly-damaged, post-apocalyptic condition; but this, in particular, does not feel entirely well thought out. If the city has been submerged in a mix of military occupation and gang warfare, with Prospect Park as one of its most turbulent hotspots, then how do two Brooklyn teenagers sneak in for a make-out session with such ease and nonchalance? If there are inconsistencies in the plot of Wolf, though, then that is partially to be expected from Marks’ approach to storytelling. While the story encompasses the city as a whole, Marks tells it through a series of scenes involving no more than three characters. Characters whisper isolated scraps of exposition in the form of rumor. The rumors conflict, and the characters upon whom we have to rely are permanently in various states of intoxication or neurotic distress. The paranoid atmosphere is so convincing that it’s easy to ignore when the ambiguity spreads into aspects of the story – such as the setting –where it probably wasn’t meant to go.
Not to be underestimated are the contributions of Robert O’Hara, whose direction maintains consistent levels of tension and unease while leaving room for some terrific comic moments. Wolf’sBrooklyn feels like a place where nothing is too horrifying to happen suddenly at any moment, and, consequently, much of what is funny in Wolf is also very scary. In that respect, O’Hara gets a lot of help from his cast. At one point, as Ephraim Benton’s misunderstood, possibly felonious, high school troublemaker prepares to steal a bicycle from a five year old, he delivers an incredible monologue with equal parts charisma, pathos, and pure, unrestrained greed. Ex-soldier/shop teacher Chad Beckim launches a one-man invasion into Prospect Park, decked out in his Gulf War finest, and can’t decide whether he wants to save his erstwhile student, or rape her—somehow, Beckim invests the character’s confusion with innocent charm. Tiffany O’Hara’s idealistic part-time teacher provides Wolf with an almost radiant locus of sanity and fairness – that is, until we see her decked out in a schoolgirl fetish costume, preparing to have sex with one of her own students.
Molly Pearson’s agoraphobic college dropout, Eve Berkson’s high school brainiac, Steven Boyer as the dork haplessly smitten with her, and especially Joey Rich’s imperious assistant principal all contribute vivid, complicated performances to the show’s strange, but harmonious mix of comedy and apocalypse. Wolf depicts New York City as mass hysteria and government fascism finally bludgeon to death its last, isolated vestiges of civil society and culture. In a way, however, Which Wolf is Whichpays a special sort of tribute to New York, somehow making its fall just as spectacular as its rise.
Play
