The beast that haunts every fairy tale; the monster of familiar idioms; the shorthand for innate wildness: wolves. With the wolf you feed, associate artistic director Chris Fontanes brings playwright Darcy Parker Bruce’s occasionally uneven riff on those ferocious creatures to the VORTEX, breaking out the bells and whistles to create a world for wild things.
Bruce’s play examines the innately wolfish desires of Max (Rachel Hancock), a woman who takes shelter in the Shady Pines Motel after some mysterious event with her maybe, possibly, hopefully soon-to-be-ex-husband. But before long, the motel’s liminal space on the edge of the woods blurs reality and fable. The wolves appear at the door. Max has to examine her own desires as natural instincts and the natural world gradually encroach on her story, and on the stage itself.
The foliage creeps closer courtesy of scenic design and painting by Izzy Poehlmann. At first, boundaries are clear. Onstage is Max’s motel room: bland art on the walls, terrible coffee maker perched above a tiny fridge. Standard fare. Meanwhile, the wolves rest in a side corner near the audience’s seats, a rough-hewn place with enough nooks and crannies for all their barbaric trinkets. Eventually their world starts swallowing the rest of the stage. Poehlmann’s created an atmosphere directly reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, where “in Max’s room a forest grew and grew and grew until [her] ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around.” Under their creative eye, the motel room gradually fills with greenery. Spaces that felt tenuous to begin with – even throughout the beginning of the play, flickers of motion and peeking eyes rustle the blinds or scratch at the door – get gloriously transformed through the production.
Transformation is the name of the game as Max faces a barrage of strange and unwelcome visitors. While plenty of those are humans, old “friends” and oracles, those people pale in comparison to their lupine alter egos. Every actor except Hancock originates as part of the wolf pack, present even before the play opens. The punked-out pack prowls pre-show, nosing about the theatre while crowned in the most magnificent masks. Costume and mask designer Aaron Flynn clothes the actors in black and flannels but creates a truly standout showpiece in the wolf heads. They completely engulf the performers while still showing sparkling personality. Fur gets tie-dyed or braided, some display scars, and one comes with a delightful swirling third eye on the forehead.
How does one act when their face is hidden? That’s the challenge the wolves literally tackle with overtly physical performances, taking cues from actual animal behavior as they paw at each other in their play. Even though the majority of the pack does shed their fur to play a human counterpart, it’s never quite as powerful as their animal selves. Indeed, the most affecting performance comes from the only wholly wolf character: Phoenix Shaw as Pamplemousse, who’s not totally the alpha but who does serve as the main communicator to lure Max into joining their band. Again, while everyone’s working hard and relishing in their parts, Shaw simply stuns in this tricky-toned work. Bruce’s play seems to want the childlike wonder of a simple fable, while holding the heft of reality’s various horrors. Shaw manages to hit that balance perfectly. He’s fierce while conveying a sense of safety, comforting even while encouraging violence and feral behavior. Even though he’s the only one obscured through the entire play, he’s the one who most convinces me that Max’s ultimate freedom would come from joining the pack.
Sendak’s original wild things are all fright and speech with no real bite. Even when they gnash their terrible teeth, they seem more suited for cuddles than warfare. Bruce’s wolves are much the same. They may threaten to eat you up, but in the end, a rumpus in the woods is their best offer.
the wolf you feed
The VORTEX
Through February 7
This article appears in January 23 • 2026.