STAGE REVIEW : Emotions Run High in Backstage ‘Extremities’

Before “Thelma and Louise,” there was “Extremities.”

William Mastrosimone’s drama, like last year’s wildly popular and widely controversial movie, takes a moment of male brutality against women and then watches the response. The tension and catharsis of “Extremities,” now playing at the Backstage Theatre through June 7, is meant to develop from seeing justice rendered from a female perspective.

In “Thelma and Louise,” the characters played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon felt they got even for a lifetime of male exploitation by taking matters into their own hands. The risk they faced along the way was that they would become like the bad men they detested most.

In “Extremities,” Marjorie, who suffers a terrible psychological and sexual mauling by a big-muscled, small-hearted punk, also turns into the mirror image of her attacker, but with different consequences.

Marjorie becomes vengeful and cruel, but after watching what she went through earlier, our sympathies can’t help but fall with her. By play’s end, however, she’s regained her morality and Mastrosimone offers the last moments as a balm for the sexual wounds that can exist between men and women.

“Extremities,” which ran in New York City before being made into a lousy 1986 movie starring Farrah Fawcett, is not a play with a lot of dramatic thrust. Of course, what Marjorie has to endure and what she later inflicts on her rapist, Raul, is sensationalistic teeth-gritting material, the stuff nightmares are made of.

But the story is more of an ethical exercise--really an extended one-act play of ideas--than a full-bodied experience. Watching “Extremities,” whether at the Backstage Theatre, in the movie theater or anywhere else for that matter, can be a fairly limited, even clinical, experience after you’ve adjusted to the initial shock.

Director Jeffrey Ault’s cast did what they could with the material during Sunday’s opening night (what a way to greet Mother’s Day!), responding with high emotions to the events at hand. As Marjorie, Darlene Kegan clearly stood out, as she should.

Her terror in the first act during the attack was palpable (it was difficult to watch, especially in this very small playhouse where the audience is less than 10 feet from the actors) and her rage later on, although a tad excessive every now and then, was believable.

As Raul, Brian Radin was stuck with a last-second transformation that seemed too simplistic, too easily reached, and he couldn’t quite pull it off. But before, Radin gave this “animal,” as Marjorie calls him, the required savageness crossed by the cleverness of a born manipulator.

‘Extremities’

A Backstage Theatre production of William Mastrosimone’s drama. Directed by Jeffrey Ault. With Darlene Kegan, Brian Radin, Lori Stamper and Denison Glass. Set by Jeffrey Ault. Lighting by Greg Alberg. Makeup by Wayne Mayberry. Runs Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. through June 7 at 1599 Superior Ave., B-2, Costa Mesa. $12.50. (714) 646-5887.