[NEohioPAL] Review of "Mr. Wolf" at Cleveland Play House

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

CPH’s ‘Mr. Wolf’ a brilliant play, an astounding production

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics



Surely you followed the real-life drama of Michelle Knight who, in 2002, was abducted by Ariel Castro and finally rescued from his Tremont home after spending 11 years in captivity. 



Leave it to Cleveland-born playwright Rajiv Joseph to find poetry in such pathology.



His “Mr. Wolf” revolves around a 15-year-old girl who, when she was three, was abducted and hidden from the world by an astronomer who believes she can unravel the mysteries of the infinite expanses of the universe.  By doing so, she will find God and save Humankind.  



Rather than being mistreated, Theresa’s intelligence and inquisitive nature are nurtured by her abductor, Mr. Wolf, who sees her as a prodigy and a prophet.  Equal parts Stockholm syndrome and genuine affection forge Theresa’s attachment to Mr. Wolf, which is all-encompassing and, after 12 years of isolation, all that she knows.



A play like this coming from Rajiv Joseph is no surprise, for he has a remarkable proclivity for examining big-ticket issues by way of small-scale stories and unlikely spokespeople.  



In “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” – a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist – he exposed the self-destructive nature of the human species by examining the atrocities of the Gulf War and giving voice to a philosophizing feline.   His “Guards at the Taj” offered an existential treatise on the human costs of Man’s self-aggrandizement, delivered by two simple-minded 17th century sentries at the Taj Mahal.  



In “Mr. Wolf,” the passionate pursuit of astronomy and the infinite possibilities of the universe are counterbalanced by the comparatively infinitesimal heartache of a parent losing a child and the astronomical odds of finding her alive after all these years.  



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/. 
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