Review: Steppenwolf’s ‘Mr. Wolf’ weaves reality and dreaminess in a play with many dimensions

A superb production and a dream cast at Steppenwolf Theatre invest Rajiv Joseph’s 2015 play “Mr. Wolf” with a level of atmospherics and complex emotion that make a somewhat spare story a rattling one.

This is a work that has an angular quality, evoking dramatic and thematic possibilities but then disrupting them rather than following a linear path. K. Todd Freeman, the Steppenwolf ensemble member who directs here, clearly understands the script’s possibilities and its odd, meditative logic.

Appropriately enough, a contemplation on possibilities is where the play begins.

Theresa (portrayed by the talented DePaul grad Emilie Maureen Hanson) is a 15-year-old apparently obsessed with astronomy, and she explains to Mr. Wolf (Tim Hopper) her latest revelation about “the heavens.” She has reached a tentative conclusion that there must be many worlds just like this one, and that the infinite nature of the universe means there is no end of possibility.

Theresa’s heady world is about to meet reality. That’s because Mr. Wolf, a college astronomy professor who kidnapped her when she was just 3 and tells her she is a “prophet,” has learned the police are on the way.

It’s a compelling start to a work that goes in several different directions – family drama, an expressionistic tale of psychological healing, a police mystery, all with occasional contemplations on belief and psychopathy. On their own, none of the narrative or thematic strands become completely satisfying, but together they provide deeply moving moments.

Theresa’s father, Michael (Namir Smallwood), has always believed his daughter is alive and so he kept searching. He picks her up and takes her home, where she meets her mother, Hana (Kate Arrington), and Michael’s second wife, Julie (Caroline Neff). Hana had left Michael and moved away, desperately needing to move on from her loss and deciding – perhaps more than believing – that her daughter was dead. Michael and Julie met at a support group, as Julie’s own daughter had died at a young age from cancer.

It’s fair to say that these adults – and this teenager – have an awful lot to deal with. Each one has seen their world turned upside down. Asked how she is reacting to the news, Hana replies, believably, “It’s insane.”

These family scenes form the heart of the play, although they aren’t really the narrative center. Joseph – a deft and versatile playwright whose “Guards at the Taj,” “King James,” and “Describe the Night” have all been produced at Steppenwolf – clearly sets up a clash between Michael, who has always looked forward to Theresa’s reappearance, and Hana, who, in her own words, “gave up on her.”

The conflict doesn’t ultimately take shape, and Hana and Michael often feel more like a set of characteristics than characters. Michael doesn’t speak much; Hana, it’s implied, is wealthy. We never quite get a sense of how they were ever together. And yet the detailed, complex performances from Arrington and Smallwood still make them fascinating to watch.

The one fully realized, intensely potent, revelatory scene involves Julie and Theresa. They probe each other, provoke each other, imbalance each other. Neff is just extraordinary, taking a character who would seem to be least central to the events and investing her with a roiling inner life. And Hanson ably plays off of that; when Theresa’s emotional armor starts cracking, when her grand statements about the heavens suddenly seem hollow, it changes the entire play, which turns in a different direction, focusing back on the hold Mr. Wolf had on his captive.

In addition to Mr. Wolf, Hopper effectively plays some other characters, including a doctor, a police officer. The idea is that Theresa sees Mr. Wolf everywhere she looks, including in an apparent dream, but that he’s strangely comforting to her rather than threatening. In one sense, you could consider this play to be a deep, fine examination of Stockholm Syndrome.

Walt Spangler’s set expertly fuses reality and dreaminess. As the audience enters, we see a realistic exterior of a house, but with a scrim and projections in front that also make it seem ghostly. Once the play begins, we see swirling astronomical images, and at the end of the opening scene, the house comes apart and later flies back together as if it were a puzzle being solved.

To address the chilly remove of some of the family scenes and the abstraction of the dream sequence, Freeman adds gentle original music from composer and sound designer Josh Schmidt to provide more emotional texture and dimension.

To his great credit, and with the help of this special cast, Freeman gives “Mr. Wolf” a sense of wholeness by transforming it into a mood piece that feels more fully realized than the storytelling. The entire show has a feeling, a vibe, that expresses a sense of cosmic mystery and a compassion for human confusion amid our search for certainty, meaning and connection.