Just Let Go (Little Colonel Players)

The Wild Women of Winedale By Jones, Hope, Wooten Directed by Jay Marie Padilla-Hayter

Review by Kate Barry

Entire contents are copyright © 2025 Kate Barry. All rights reserved.

At the passing of a beloved and much admired aunt, three women gather to sort their lives and plan their next chapters. The Wild Women of Winedale with The Little Colonel Players explores the relationships and bonds between women, for better or worse. There are laughs and some sentimental moments to be sure in this lighthearted offering about family.

The Wild family consists of two sisters, Fanny and Willa played by Nicole Greenwood and Hannah Jones Thomas and their “big as life and twice as daring” sister in law, Johnnie Faye (or Jef), portrayed by Erika Wardlow. Fanny is a museum curator with a big project that weaves its way throughout the play. As Fanny approaches her monumental 60th birthday, she focuses her energy on creating an exhibition and film project called “Discovering Women.”

The play involves six individual scenes where actors provide monologues about the female experience. Vast and diverse, sisters, daughters and professionals speak about self-empowerment, positive changes and pursuits of happiness. Shannon Leonard is a pageant queen in a power suit with her own definitions of success. Kitty Wagner and Rena Cherry Brown are “not really twins” in the same dress who find themselves at an impasse when fortune comes their way. Heidi Whitlow is messy yet grateful for her two sets of twins while Shelly Reid is reaping the rewards of a life she did not expect. Beth Northup provides a heartfelt eulogy of sorts as an estranged daughter reunited with her mother in the most unlikely of places.

While the play contains plenty of jokes and fun, the themes of grief, aging and letting go are never lost. Nicole Greenwood’s Fanny is a woman with many recent losses.  She channels her sadness into productive purging as she prepares to rid her aunt’s house of antiques. Greenwood gives a humorous and uplifting performance of what it feels like to grow older with everything to gain and nothing to lose. I must note that the drastic change from the overcrowded stuff on the stage to bare shelves was a clever shift to the production and made good use of the set.

Hannah Jones Thomas and Erika Wardlow give good contrast to Greenwood’s artsy Fanny. While Thomas’ Willa constantly seeks relief from a stressful life as a nurse, Jonnie Faye is on the hunt for a man and a home. Equally funny in their respective pursuits, Thomas and Wardlow bring realistic quirks to their characters. Thomas’ frustration with working out and knitting brought deserved laughs from the audience. Wardlow’s annoyance within Johnnie Faye’s recounts of dating and not feeling seen seemed relevant in these times of online dating apps. Wardlow and Thomas do well to build tension as Willa and Jonnie Faye bicker about a past love triangle which is met with a sentimental, albeit, convenient resolution.

The Wild Women of Winedale shows what it takes to restart a new life and how to let go of the old one that does not serve you. It reminds us all that you are never too old to start again. And that you can do anything with family on your side.

The Wild Women of Winedale The Little Colonel Players June 6, 7, 12, 13, 14 at 7:30 pm June 8, 15 at 2:00 pm The Little Colonel Playhouse 302 Mount Mercy Dr Pewee Valley, KY 40056 www.littlecolonel.net