Rachel Bonds’ The Wolfe Twins explores intimacy and its loss. In the wake of their father’s death, Lewis invites his sister Dana on a vacation to Italy, hoping to reconnect. But when they encounter Raina, a magnetic fellow traveler, the once-inseparable siblings start to reckon with the ways they’ve grown apart, and grapple with what they do and don’t know about each other as adults.
Rachel considers the intricacies of these relationships with a blend of well-observed and precise language. Her dialogue—whether punctuated by pauses or overlapping mid-thought—is specific yet retains elasticity, evoking the awkward rhythms of conversation. She excavates the important minutiae—the ripples and ruptures of our day-to-day interactions that we’re not always conscious of—and exposes her characters at their most complicated junctures of uncertainty, transition, and introspection. This attunement to micro-behavior shows how the quiet, idiosyncratic, easy, or difficult moments in our lives can accumulate, spurring revelations of surprising depth.
These realizations unfold in the small common area of a modest B&B in Rome, an unlikely place for the confessions and discoveries that emerge over the course of the play. While the novelty of unfamiliar people and places encourages emotional risk-tasking between the three visitors, the public nature of the space underscores the stakes of that kind of vulnerability. For Dana and Lewis, the allure of being out of their element clashes with their shared history, revealing how a mix of familiar and foreign can escalate tensions to their limits.
The Wolfe Twins captures the difficulty—and danger—of being vulnerable with strangers and family alike, and, at its core, examines the mechanics of our intimate relationships. What sustains a connection, and how do we allow those closest to us to grow and change? As Rachel’s characters reconcile their individual pasts, they also struggle to untether themselves from their assumptions about each other, fumbling towards a new, more authentic understanding.