Mitchell Winter in Wolf Play at MCC Theatre. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.
The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: MCCâs Wolf Play
By Ross
âWhat if I said I am not what you think you see?â This is the opening line that swings strong, setting up the battle, and signaling the start. Itâs a captivating first few minutes, ringing in a question match that enticingly registers. Playfully, it sets the stanceâŚ
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Suddenly all seems to be going the British actressâs way: A first book, an Off Broadway production of her play and a starring role opposite Tom Hiddleston in âBetrayal.â If only it were that simple.
For the last five weeks, the British actress and playwright Zawe Ashton has been zipping back and forth between West 45th Street and Lower Manhattan. She has gone from speaking the words of her character Emma in an acclaimed Broadway revival of Harold Pinterâs âBetrayalâ to watching her own words brought to life by a cast of others in her play âfor all the women who thought they were Madâ at Soho Rep.
âItâs like doing a boxing match and then swimming the Channel,â she joked recently over breakfast at a French cafe in Chelsea, dressed stylishly in a black dress with luminescent buttons and billowing sleeves, her glasses perched carefully on her nose.
Everything seems to be falling into place for Ashton, who also released her first book this year and starred with Jake Gyllenhaal in the dark art-world satire âVelvet Buzzsaw.â
Her play, which began previews the same day it opened at the Hackney Showroom in London, has its New York premiere on Oct. 27 and has already been extended. But the moment was a long time coming.
Ashton, who grew up in London and whose mother moved from Uganda to England as a teenager, wrote âfor all the womenâ 11 years ago, when she was just 24. She delivered the draft by hand to the Royal Court Theater, the culmination of her participation in the theaterâs young writers program. But the experimental play has had multiple starts and stops since then.
It features a constellation of women ranging in age from 8 to 65, and is based on months of research Ashton did on the myriad ways the British health system has failed black women, particularly when it comes to mental health and overmedication.
The career-focused protagonist, Joy, begins to fall apart after witnessing a woman falling past a window, presumably to her death.
Joy soon starts taking pills prescribed by a doctor. The other women surrounding her are a mixture of contemporary and ancestral voices. At times they serve as a kind of African-inspired chorus, interjecting and instructing Joy; their poetic text is influenced by Ugandan lullabies among other sources.
The script, though set in Britain, feels relevant in the United States in light of recent disturbing data about black womenâs health, including their significantly high maternal mortality risk.
Ashton is both accepting and frustrated by the decade that it took for the play to find a home.
âWhen Iâm thinking about it in the most positive way possible,â she said, âI believe it had to brew and had to find its time and find its zeitgeist and find its conversation, which is very much a conversation thatâs happening now in the U.S. in regards to the black female body.â
âAnd then when Iâm more my cynical 35-year-old self, I wish this could have just been produced earlier, at its most pure. Because itâs had a lot of face-lifts, itâs been handed around to many theatrical institutions and brilliant minds and it has changed a lot on the way.â
She went on: âEveryone has wanted to make this play make much more sense. They wanted to turn it into a much more linear and literal document and that was never what it was. My 24-year-old self wrote it in 24 hours. I donât say that in a boastful way â I say it as an invitation to understand what itâs like when things youâve deeply intuited for a long time, even as a young person, are suddenly unlocked. Thatâs what happens when you are 24. You get married in a night â you break up in a night â you change countries in a night. â
She declined to offer too direct a connection between the material and her own experiences, but admitted she was influenced by women she has known and said the voices of the characters had been floating in her head for some time.
The nonlinear, destabilizing nature of the piece appealed to Sarah Benson, the artistic director of Soho Rep, which regularly takes chances on formally experimental works, recently including âFairview,â which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in drama.
âIt can only happen in theatrical form, this melding of content,â Benson said. âSheâs making vivid something that black women have experienced for decades.â
Whitney White, who is directing the Soho Rep production, said the playâs abstractions make sense for the current moment in New York theater.
âRefracted black conscience is hot right now,â she said. âNew writers, emerging writers are chopping and screwing all our lives, and spewing it out in an interesting, visceral way.â
White said that often black women who are misdiagnosed or overprescribed drugs donât report what theyâre going through and can be demonized by the medical field. âThereâs stigma. Itâs unfortunate and itâs real and it happens,â she said.
Even as Ashton gets ready for her own playâs debut, she is still performing eight times a week in âBetrayal,â where Ben Brantley in The New York Times praised her âbreakoutâ turn as a vulnerable, world-weary wife caught in a love triangle between her husband (Tom Hiddleston) and his best friend (Charlie Cox).
Despite the intense schedule, Ashton said sheâs finding strength and inspiration in Pinter.
âHeâs not concerned with the truth, necessarily, in art and I love that,â she said. âYouâre supposed to stumble across it in the dark every night. Good writing shouldnât be wrapped in cellophane. It should be open to the elements and full of maggots and it should be left to grow and deepen and fester. I hang on to that.â
In New York, she has found rare moments of solace wandering Chelsea and the halls of the Guggenheim, spending time with the Basquiats. She sees herself aligned âwith the poets or the writers during the jazz era, more improvisational, truly collaborative. Iâm in a nostalgic place, and Iâm in America trying to figure it out.â
Lingering after breakfast, Ashton said she finally knows herself well enough to trust her instincts. No longer does she believe, she said, that there can be real distance between the person and the creative artist.
âItâs closed up since Iâve gotten older.,â she explained. âI canât be in a situation where I feel distanced, othered, underrepresented, cross-questioned, put down, unseen as a person or as an artist and pretend that I will be O.K. Thatâs suppression I have released myself from.â
Finally seeing her play onstage is part of that release. âEleven years of this group of women in this play not having an audience to commune with has been a phantom limb,â she said. âI canât wait to see it soar or fail. I just need to see it.â
" I donât even care that my hair is a mess and I look like a total dork. He was so kind and gracious. Thank you for letting me post this @twhiddleston đđź "
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[ Tom Hiddleston at the first preview of Zawe Ashton's For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad at Soho Rep on October 14, 2019 in New York City. ]
" đ Successful first Preview! And I got to meet one of my favorite actors! @twhiddleston
He is so nice!
.
@sohorep #allthewomen "
[ Tom Hiddleston at the first preview of Zawe Ashton's For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad at Soho Rep on October 14, 2019 in New York City. ]
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anyone ever try 99 cent sundays at soho rep? is it really difficult to get in and do they turn a lot of people away? and do you actually need to bring 99 cents in exact change (i don't get it lol). i intended to try it the last 2 years for 10 out of 12 and revolt she said respectively, but never followed through and went. (i know it's off season, but trying to plan ahead for once).
I actually havenât. Iâve either had tickets or been working. But maybe someone else knows?
10 Out Of 12 starts with a headset. When you check in at the box office, youâre given a small earpiece and call box. Thereâs headset chatter the moment you put it on. As a stage manager, I found it quite comforting. Itâs the first 10 Out Of 12 (an Equity term for an all-day tech rehearsal) for an unnamed time-traveling period piece. Tensions are high. Costumes are a struggle. The g.d. EXIT sign is too bright.
Itâs all coming together and falling apart too.
I am not sure how well this show translates to audience members who arenât involved in theater. I think you have to at least be an active theatergoer to enjoy this, but I am guessing only active theatergoers are the ones checking out an Anne Washburn play way downtown at SoHo Rep.Â
If Mr. Burns was too weird for you, this is going to drive you crazy. Washburn is trying a lot of different ideas and techniques, and most of them are successful but some fall flat. Some storylines arenât resolved, and some are never touched on more than once. There are plenty of tech theater jokes (an extended bit with an increasingly frustrated lighting designer setting levels was particularly good) that may be confusing to an outsider. And of course the constant headset chatter from the crew, a great way to play with what can be heard backstage vs. onstage.Â
Quincy Tyler Bernstine is a wonderful soothing Stage Manager. Sheâs clearly learned from great SMs. Conrad Schott is also great as the too-energetic, slightly-precocious Assistant Director. Â