A truly immersive piece of theatre
It was truly hard to know what to expect when watching a play set around the discovery of a letter delivered a hundred years too late, but Good Wolf People managed to blow me out of the water. The story revolves around a letter that turned up in 2021, over a hundred years after it was sent, and the media outburst and theorising that happened afterwards. Multiple narrators and characters are played by Lauren Walker, Johnny Handscombe, Emma Jaggs and Deborah Williams, with their overlapping voices and personas representing multiple viewpoints.
I was sucked in immediately to the present-day world of friends Christabel and Katie, and was driven full pelt through their pieced-together history, from their shared Quaker beliefs, their resulting relationship and the incident that forced Christabel to write the letter apologising to Katie. The play does well to flesh out these mysterious figures, explaining how Katie’s Irish background informed her life in London, and finding sources to emphasise Christabel’s extensive charity work in Croydon. Although at times, some conclusions made by the narrators seemed like excessively big jumps of logic, with a lot of explaining as to how they got there, the play pulls you along with barely any time to register, before moving onto the next topic.
Straddling the line between exposition and entertainment may be difficult, and although Good Wolf People may have strayed across that line at times, their strong characterisation and friendly personas seemed to metaphorically grab you by the hand as you are swept along in this mystery with them. The hour flew by, and I left feeling like I had not only enjoyed a great piece of theatre, but that I had learnt a lot as well.
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