Pre-game warm-ups for a team sport – soccer in this case – are an ideal way to dramatise the individual v the group dynamics of teenage girls trying to find their places and ways to be in the world. With a cast of nine young women it is also an ideal choice for a Toi Whakaari graduation play, although it does ask them to regress a few years and recover behaviours they have doubtless grown out of.

This first play by young American playwright Sarah DeLappe was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Given Toi Whakaari’s guest director Stella Reid and her cast opt to maintain the USA voice, I can’t help but listen for the elements that would stop them using their own Kiwi voices. Mention of Mexicans and Abu Ghraib, albeit naïve in perception, spotting a particular bird species, DiedInHouse.com (USA addresses only) and the whole culture of sports scouts and college scholarships pretty well justify that decision.

Otherwise Cambodia / the Khmer Rouge, tampons, allergies, abortion, calling someone a ‘retard’, refugee immigrants, home schooling, living in a yurt, having parents from different cultures, rules about swearing, knowing someone who died, stress-related vomiting, coaches with hangovers, the fraught question of who gets invited to birthday parties, hot boyfriends, ski-trips, illness and injury, friendships that go bad … These topics could litter the lives and conversations of teenagers anywhere.  

Here they play out randomly – in pairs or threes but always with an eye or ear out for what else is happening – like a multi-ball exercise in manoeuvring, dodging, passing with an occasional score. More often someone seems to be on a roll only to be penalised for gaucheness, a mispronunciation or a tactless faux pas.

Initially it seems chaotic, with overlapping dialogue and multiple conversations intersecting, but gradually we get to know each very distinct individual, identified only on stage and in the programme by the numbers on their jerseys.

The Wolves’ team captain, #25 (Darneen Christian), seems a bit on the outer, uncomfortable with her rank perhaps, or is it something else? #7 (Tara Erenskjold) and #14 (Isabella Austin) are BFFs and a bit of a double act – until they’re not. #2 (Nathalie Morris) is quieter and kinder, especially to #46 (Meg Sydenham), the home-schooled ‘still waters run deep’ new girl.

#11 (Ashleigh Williams) is somewhat preoccupied with death while #13 (Jane Wills) is what we’d call ‘a bit of a dag’ and prone to overstepping the mark . #8 (Marshayla Christie-Finlay) is easily seen as the naïve optimist until we learn why she needs to ‘accentuate the positive’. #00, the goalie (Jessica Hong), tends to throw up before each game so has little to say – until she does.

Despite their uniform kits – pink jerseys and socks with purple shorts – each actor inhabits her role with total conviction, trusting the bigger picture to gain coherence as the action plays out beyond a wall of netting that suggests we are watching from behind an outsized goal. Designer Rose Kirkup’s set is also backed with a darkly reflective surface that implies more happening at this indoor sports venue, as does Thomas Lambert’s sound design while Marcus McShane’s overhead lighting adds to the institutional ambience. Touches like balls dropping from the sky counterpoint the realistic rhythms of the swirling chit-chat and physical flexing.

As the scenes play out with exemplary fluidity, director Reid ensures that silence and stillness bring due focus to key moments and elements that we may not realise, at the time, are set-ups for later pay-offs. There are blistering arguments too, that point to the fragility of egos and alliances. The skill in the writing is clearly honoured in the way we recall what seemed like random snippets as they suddenly gain significance.

The final scene is a master-class in making us really want to know exactly what has happened, as we are drip-fed enough to finally get it. I can’t reveal what that is but terms like ‘rite of passage’ and ‘loss of innocence’ may apply as we sense a hard-won maturation process. And it’s here we see Jack Hauschild’s Soccer Dad (Soccer Mom in the original) trying to bridge the generation gap as they confront this unwelcome change.  

The American accents, by the way, flow quite naturally. After all haven’t we all grown up with them, not to mention countless representations of American teenagers? But any whiff of stereotype quickly evaporates here as we ‘get the number’ of each player.

You won’t see The Wolves anywhere else anytime soon so grab this opportunity to welcome talented people we hope to see much more of in the years to come.  

[Stand by for my review of the other grad play: The Visit.]  

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