Big Very Bad Wolf at Steppenwolf

Rajiv Joseph’s play Mr.Wolf now on at Steppenwolf is a devastating and dark rumination on the universe of damage people can do to each other and how they manage to go on afterwards. 

Emilie Maureen Hanson plays Theresa, the now 15 year old who was abducted at 3 by Mr Wolf, a serial killer of girls with a day job teaching at the local community college.  The play opens with Wolf telling the completely isolated Theresa that The World is coming and she needs to know about chocolate bars and he asks her permission to kill himself, which he does.  Theresa is taken by law enforcement  to be evaluated  then back to her shell shocked parents who are now divorced due to the stress of her disappearance. Her father has remarried a woman who had lost her daughter to cancer.  There is more than enough trauma in these lives to go on for hours but this brisk 90 minute play takes you through Theresa’s growing awareness of what she has been through and her parents herculean struggle to make any pieces of a life fit together given what has happened, to an ending where you wonder will they make it.

Theresa parrots much of the brainwashing that Wolf fed her and she sees Wolf (played by Tim Hopper)  in every male she meets, from the doctor to the detective. She believes she is a prophet but we come to know it is because she had to be one in order not to be a Wolf casualty.   Her parents wrestle with what they did back when she was missing and then stand frozen in the face of who she is now: a delusional teen starting to remember her trauma, a person they do not know and who does not know them. How do you build a life from these shattered pieces?

There is a beautiful scene with a horse: Wolf allows her out of the compound where she is virtually a prisoner to meet a horse to distract her from what she may have witnessed with another girl being killed.  The horse imparts a kind of healing. Rasean Davonte Johnson’s projection design comes together with Josh Schmidt’s sound design to evoke the deeply spiritual energy of a horse.  It is healing for us in the audience: this is not an easy play. Kudos to the designers here collaborating: the elements also poetically invoke an expanding universe earlier in the play as Theresa’s universe cracks wide open. 

This play is profound and beautifully crafted.  It will work on you.  The horrors in the plot are slowly revealed so you have time to absorb them somewhat. You will keep thinking about this story and how thorny life can be. Somehow, even with an ambiguous ending, it is uplifting because deep humanity is offered.  Go, but be ready to be disturbed. We live in disturbing times. This play will help you become comfortable with discomfort. 

Mr. Wolf is playing at the Downstairs Theatre at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 N Halsted in Chicago Tuesdays through Sundays through November 2, 2025. For tickets and information go to  https://www.steppenwolf.org/tickets--events/seasons-/2025-26/mr.-wolf/

 No part of this review was created using AI

 For more reviews go to https://www.theatreinchicago.com

 No part of this review was created using AI

 For more reviews go to https://www.theatreinchicago.com