Photo Credit: Maria Petrella
Left to Right: Katlin Drew, Ashlea Woodley, Abbey Sours
Umbrella Group teamed up with The Healing Center of Milwaukee to present William Mastrosimone’s Extremities, a play exploring the nature of justice, sexual violence and the human survival instinct.
Something feels wrong from the beginning. The play opens with a wasp sting, clear foreshadowing of the more significant danger to come. Marjorie (Ashley Woodley) expects her day to include nothing more violent than this showdown with an insect, but is soon faced with a much larger attacker in the form of Raul, her would-be rapist. Played by the tall, sweet-voiced Marcus Beyer, Raul works the room with intention, invading Marjorie’s space and oozing charm like tar. Marjorie’s descent into a flinching puppet is painful to watch, but Woodley handles it well. The sickening situation quickly flips from a rapist and his victim to a woman exercising her own raw power in revenge, disregarding the law in favor of her own form of justice.
The strongest moments of the play occur between Beyer and Woodley, the verbal threats carrying more weight than the physical ones. Fear exists in the air, as the sense of helplessness grows with Marjorie’s realization that abiding by the law might destroy her chance for safety rather than ensure it.
Some bureaucratic reality is reintroduced when Marjorie’s roommates, Terry (Abbey Sours) and Patricia (Kaitlin Drew) return home to find a strange man hog-tied in their fireplace. As if the situation wasn’t already messy enough, the uncertainty and weakness felt by Marjorie’s roommates highlight the confusion which marks the kind of crime which has no evidence, and how the accompanying pressure tests loyalties.
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The strength of this play lies in the language; even in moments when this production hesitates, the words pack their own punch. The threats played out onstage serve as unsettling reminders of the reality of such violence in many women’s lives. It feels like an important story to watch from start to finish. Extremities presents questions of where authority comes from, suggesting that it’s time for the audience to try to answer them.
Through May 23 at Marquette University’s Helfaer Theatre Studio 013, 525 N. 13th St. Tickets available at umbrellagroupmilwaukee.com.
