Wolf Play at SoHo Rep.

Ash, focused on making a groundbreaking debut as a professional boxer sparring with male opponents, is furious that Robin has acted unilaterally and in untimely fashion. Robin is adamant, saying, "I'm sorry I couldn't wait for you to be done thinking about it, for someone's unaffordable sperm to catch my sad, shriveled eggs but right now there's a child, in our house, can we please just be grown-ups about this?"

Good luck with that. Wolf Play is remarkably careless when it comes to motivations and backstory. Did Robin and Ash attempt a conventional agency adoption? Was Ash ever onboard with this plan? Did Robin pursue it entirely behind Ash's back? The script never says, leaving unexplained (except for the line quoted above) Robin's willingness to go through with this dubious and probably illegal transaction, seemingly on impulse. And is it really in Wolf's best interest to be inserted into a household of squabbling adults, including drop-ins by Ryan, Robin's brother, who, as Ash's trainer/manager, sees the boy as an unwelcome distraction?

Gradually, despite all the drama, the little family begins to form a unit. Still, the obstacles are many: Among other things, Robin has a meltdown when Wolf declines to accompany her to yoga class, preferring boxing practice with Ash. Robin takes the boy to the prizefight, where he freaks out at the sight of Ash being beaten up, causing the match to end in chaos. And Robin and Ash aren't shy about having high-decibel arguments with Wolf in the next room. By the time Peter returns -- having dumped his wife and biological child -- suing to regain custody, you may find yourself concluding sadly that Wolf is best off in an orphanage.

If Wolf Play were a drama about a child at the mercy of clueless, self-involved adults, I'd say that Jung was right on target. But I suspect we're supposed to feel for Robin and Ash, especially when those dastardly cisgender men Peter and Ryan team up to challenge the adoption; it's an awfully big ask. The script seemingly suggests that no one is ever ready to raise a child, that it's a lifelong case of on-the-job training; this may be true but, even so, Robin and Ash are appallingly unprepared.

Wolf, represented by a puppet designed by Amanda Villalobos and handled by the actor Mitchell Winter, breaks through the noise in certain moments, desperately clinging to the departing Peter or tentatively bonding with Ash over the breakfast table. But the charming, charismatic Winter must carry the burden of the play's chief metaphor, of the boy's imagined identity as a wolf, which is reiterated at wearying length; in moments of stress, he turns to howling, exacerbating the production's already shrill tone.

[...] As her previous work, Wild Goose Dreams, showed, Jung is a writer to watch. But Wolf Play, despite its obvious sincerity and good intentions, has its priorities backwards. Ash, Robin, and Peter, despite their claims on Wolf, come across as totally unfit parents. What that kid needs is an advocate, somebody who might finally consider what is best for him. And what Wolf Play needs to do is pause for a second and consider what the commitment to raising a child really means.

In fact, one of the marvels of this one-act play by the South Korean writer and translator Hansol Jung, now having its COVID-delayed New York premiere under Dustin Wills’s vigorous direction, is that it manages to be so shattering while eschewing naturalism. The fourth wall is knocked down immediately and abruptly, when Mitchell Winter, the sly, commanding actor cast as Wolf, leaps out of a trap door, insisting that he is neither a performer nor a human being—then admitting he is both, sort of. “The truth is a wobbly thing,” he explains, and indeed, we soon learn that this “lone wolf,” an orphaned animal, represents a six-year-old Asian boy, Jeenu, with Winter maneuvering a skinny-limbed puppet. Jeenu belongs to a mercifully small but nonetheless horrifying percentage of international adoptees who are “rehomed”—that is, given away by couples

[...] It’s while surfing Yahoo that Robin, a lesbian, finds Jeenu and decides to bring him home to raise with her non-binary spouse, Ash. The couple that originally adopted the boy wound up having their own biological child, and apparently couldn’t juggle warming bottles with caring for an older tyke. We meet the husband, Peter, when he drops Jeenu off at his new home like a piece of furniture, introducing him as “Pete Junior.” “You must think I’m an animal,” Peter says, demeaning wolves and other mammals who cherish and protect their young.

Jung is ultimately less interested in judgment, though, than in exploration. Having Jeenu find refuge in a non-traditional setting was not a random choice for the playwright, who was influenced by the notion of chosen families in the queer community—how marginalized people find loving support when they are denied it in the usual places.