Review: Wolf Whistle

Wolf Whistle is a student written play by St Andrews legend, Joanna Alpern, telling the stories of three women who find themselves visiting the same doctor with the same concern on the same day. The women may all live differently: Amanda currently enduring a “triple extended gap year”, Becca realising the world outside her school gates is not quite what she expected, and Clare coming to terms with sacrificing her favourite bus routes, and bigger dreams, for her husband whilst coping with aging.

There is no denying that Wolf Whistle is a funny play garnering plenty of laughs from the audience, but it is also incredibly insightful. Difficult issues were handled with great subtlety and tact: they may run through the course of the play but they don’t overshadow it.

A simplistic set and clever use of lighting combined with skillful directorial choices under Katherine Weight allows the drama to unfold with minimalistic intervention and the three actors were able to handle the complex roles brilliantly. The clear age differences between the characters were conveyed expertly, with Cate Kelly (Becca), Cara Mahoney (Amanda), and Faye Morrice (Clare) tackling the roles of a teenager, young woman, and older woman respectively with elegance, an impressive feat when we consider that the actors are just a few years apart in age. The writing was witty and demanding, defined by both comedic and darker moments, but they handled it with ease. The early scenes were laced with comic moments, and Alpern has a talent for moving comedic scenes into new territories to allow poignancy to come through. The monologue form of the play meant the cast rarely interacted with each other on the stage so each woman was able to explore her character in significant depth, with the occasional ‘accidental’ insight being found from a passing comment.

I would thoroughly recommend Wolf Whistle, and luckily for you, it is running on both Saturday and Sunday night at 7.30pm at the Barron so you can see this play for yourself. Trust me, you’ll want to.