Selkie Woman was an unfortunate disappointment. It is understood that this was done as a full production as part of Columbia’s MFA program in 2024 with the same creative team of Zoe Stanton-Savitz, playwright, Delia Dumont, director, Pauline Lara as Layla and Brianna DeMilio as JJ. At this point a reading should be done in a studio and not a production venue. Despite the disappointment, it must be acknowledged that Stanton-Savitz has a play with excellent bones. It has some areas that could be expanded and some that could be cut.

Stanton-Savitz’s story draws on a long history of serious plays, often beautiful plays, about co-dependency. Just this year ATA has produced 4 to 7, ART has presented Blood Orange and even Pen Pals tells the story of two individuals in powerful co-dependent relationships. Of course, the ultimate combination of beauty, “love” and danger was found in TheaterLab’s 2024 revival of Tender Napalm. That means Selkie has high standards to meet.

The one thing that all these shows have in common is that despite the incredible sexual tension in each, there is never any way of knowing if that tension was ever acted on. The co-dependency is not increased by intercourse. It is a mental dependency, independent of any physicality. That is the only major flaw in Stanton-Savitz’s work. The sexual relationship between Layla and JJ is a throw-in. It does not make JJ more dependent on Layla. In fact, it has the opposite effect. When Layla abruptly leaves there is the sense that if provides an avenue of escape for JJ rather than an additional hold.

What Stanton-Savitz needs to provide is more of the background that causes the profound psychological damage that has JJ and Layla willing to engage in self harm and mutual harm as young teens. Ironically, this would not be an issue if we met the protagonists when they were older. Stanton-Savitz supplies more of that for Layla, but not enough to get the audience to believe that the damage is more environmental, than genetic and there is even less support for JJ’s lack of emotional connection.

The choice of Selkie as the title is interesting. The attributes of a Selkie is that they seems to have a dual nature – tender and kind and manipulative and mean. They are as likely to fool their human counterpart as their human counterpart is to fool them. It is the nature of co-dependency and exploring co-dependency is what gives Selkies the potential to be a powerful vesicle. But Layla’s behavior in the last few scenes is more manipulative than co-dependent and that does create confusion and should be corrected.

Selkie Woman has great bones, but it requires further development to give it the impact that the subject demands.