Nostalgia, Memory & Reality
Some of the most prominent themes throughout Veal have to do with nostalgia, memory, and trauma. The title itself reflects these themes, with veal being meat from baby cows under a year old. This title plays into the theme of nostalgia in that Chelsea wants to go back to the time she was younger and talks about dying when she was a kid rather than still being alive. The play being titled Veal foreshadows this mindset of Chelsea's about being stuck in her childhood mindset still and her murder at the end of the play.
Chelsea's character has a complicated relationship with nostalgia throughout the play. She yearns to re-experience her middle school years, although the zoo trip when she was 13 was a traumatic one that has stuck with her and shaped her mindset ever since. The other girls also seem to have a certain nostalgia for their younger years once they get into the rhythm of acting them out, however to a lesser extant than Chelsea. Nostalgia also has a special place in this post apocalyptic world for Franny, Noa, and Lulu, as it is unlikely they had access to much during the apocalypse and have been yearning for things they used to have, which Chelsea has access to and they did not.
Memory and reality is one aspect of the play that is played with. Chelsea in particular seems to have the power in this case to decide what memories are considered real or not. When the other girls try to play out a scenario that doesn't seem realistic enough to Chelsea, she has the power to tell them to do the scenario again and right this time. However, when Chelsea presents a scenario that the others find unrealistic with the wolf, she also forces them to play that out even though it isn't the reality of what happened, it is what happened in Chelsea's memory, or at least the one Chelsea wants to believe is real.
Power
Power is a theme throughout Veal that can be seen through the many social dynamics presented. The power dynamics between Chelsea and the girls, as the Queen of North America, is different from the power dynamics among the girls when they are acting as middle schoolers. And despite Chelsea's power over the whole situation, she also seems to revel in being treated as lesser than the other girls throughout their nostalgic play acting. Chelsea and Franny also have an interesting dynamic in their struggle for power over the other near the end, with Franny having had the power in the past and Chelsea having the power in the present getting murky in this mixture of the past and present at the end. In the end, Franny gains the upperhand in killing Chelsea, but Chelsea still has some power over them even in death, alluding to the trauma of both this interaction and the zoo trip in the past and Franny and the girls feeling bad over how they treated Chelsea as kids. Chelsea's remaining power can be seen through the Concubine as well, who chooses to stay with Chelsea and implies he chose to be under Chelsea's power in the first place.
The Concubine also is there to show the change in how we are meant to view Chelsea and her power, with him being a silent figure seemingly stifled and powerless under Chelsea's control in the beginning, and progressing throughout the story to show he was willing to live with Chelsea and happily under her control, or maybe even unaware he could've been anywhere else doing anything else.