Writer and Director: Che Walker
A giant interstate road sign that once read “Los Angeles” is ripped and torn, as if by some wild animal with phenomenal strength. Beneath it, a piece of road has been ripped asunder, a huge crack possibly the result of some inordinate pressure.
Amy Jane Cook’s stunning set design is the stage for the tale of Maxine (Clare Latham), who starts her life as the child of an abusive father, witnessing (and occasionally suffering) his flashes of frustration-inspired violence.
Writer and director Che Walker constructs a tale of magical realism around Maxine’s life of hardship. She has conversations first with the god Lycaeon, a king turned into a wolf by Zeus, and now immortalised in the sky as the constellation Lupus, and then with a she-wolf who has just given birth.
Maxine’s lupine abilities emerge at moments when she is stressed or angered. Growing up poor and abused in Reagan’s America gives her plenty of such occasions, especially when she gets caught up in drug dealing, and becomes involved with a Nicaraguan cartel.
Walker constructs a tale that allows him to touch on one of the greatest controversies of Reagan’s presidential career, when the money from arms sales to Iran was funnelled to Nicaragua’s terrorist Contras. That money helped fuel the supply of cocaine and other narcotics to the US, where the same administration then declared a “war on drugs” that hit the affected addicts more than those at the top.
But the further Walker delves into the politics of Reaganism, the more the foundations of his storytelling threaten to slip out from under him. When he returns to Maxine’s life running a crack factory in an LA suburb, Wolf Cub returns to a surer footing – although there is something disquieting about Hampstead’s resolutely middle-class audience guffawing to lines about crack cocaine being “the best thing that ever happened to poor people in America”.
A more successful alignment with 1980s history comes as the people of Los Angeles riot after the acquittal of the officers whose savage beating of Rodney King was caught on videotape. It acts as a trigger for the play’s physical and emotional climax, Latham’s magnetic performance presenting a conclusion that is visceral and magical.
Throughout, Latham prowls the stage, flitting between a playful girlishness and the carnivorous ferocity she must possess to survive. Walker has created a powerful vehicle for her talents – one that the actor elevates with a performance that is as extraordinary and magical as this lupine tale.
Continues until 7 May 2022
