Heeeeelllllllllooooo.

Sometimes I don’t know how to start these articles.

Anyway, hi. I saw Kat Sandler‘s new play, Wildwoman, at Soulpepper this week. Wildwoman is part of their “Her Words” festival, which showcases new plays and works-in-progress by Canadian female playwrights. Wildwoman is about Catherine de Medici’s rise to power in France and King Henry II’s new pet Pete, a “wildman” kept in a cage who is actually just a person with a hair growth syndrome. I think the play is about who is a true monster, how monsters are made and how power corrupts.

I’m going for an “efficient” approach today (i.e. I wrote this review in bullet points), because that’s what I felt like doing. So let’s start with the pros:

Pros:

• GORGEOUS gorgeous gorgeous costumes and sets.
• Beautiful acting – Soulpepper really knows how to attract top-tier talent. All five cast members were excellent.
• I think the characters were well-written and developed, such that there was always a glimmer of humanity in all of them, even in their most despicable moments. No one was one-dimensional.
• Special shoutout to Rose Napoli who played Catherine. I really loved her character’s transformation throughout the show.
• This show was polished. No dropped lines, no awkward pauses. Very professional and well-rehearsed.
• Great lighting and sound design. Great use of music as transitions.
• So many clever, subtle directing choices by Kat Sandler. Loved the final scene – I won’t spoil it.
• The writing – very funny, bold quick, a little raunchy. It’s written in modern-day speech, so I was at first a bit thrown off by the colloquialisms. I got used to it, though, and by the end I was fully on board.
• I think it’s a very interesting premise for a show. Sometimes I see shows and wonder, “Huh. Why did the playwright choose to write about this?” I did not think that about Wildwoman.

Cons:

• The play was nearly 3 hours long. It dragged a bit at times, and like I said before, it wasn’t because of awkward pauses or technical errors. The show was expertly directed. The show covers 30-ish years (?) of history, so there’s a lot to fit in, but I wonder if there’s a way to remove some redundancies.

So yeah, I quite liked Wildwoman. It was a fun, wild, long show. I’d happily see another Kat Sandler play.

Wildwoman is playing at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the Distillery District until Oct. 29, 2023. You can purchase tickets here.

Featured image: Dan Mousseau and Rose Napoli, by Dahlia Katz. Soulpepper.ca