At Flashpoint’s Mead Theatre Lab in downtown DC, Ambassador Theatre continues its tradition of provocative, daring theatre with its US premiere of Canadian playwright Michele Riml’s hard-charging, intensely relevant two-actor script, RAGE.

Set in the drab, basement office of high school “Peace Counselor” Laura Whalen, RAGE revolves around the escalating encounter of the counselor with agitated, about-to-be-expelled high school senior Raymond Stitt. Played with tremendous dexterity and fluid theatricality, actors Ariana Almajan as Ms. Whalen and Marlow Vilchez as Raymond move across the stage like prize fighters defending their titles to the death: she, the champion of Pacifism and the gentler angels of our nature, and he, the champion of realism and the darker angels of our souls. Who among them will win this battle for heavyweight championship of the world?

The student Raymond, known as “Rage” by his only two friends, has grown increasingly marginalized within the high school’s social milieu. Yet, even his two lone friends deserted him when his disaffection with hypocrisy and myopia exploded in history class. And certainly the history teacher’s patience was exhausted by Raymond’s intense inquiry into Hitler’s political appeal, and Raymond now faces suspension. We learn of Raymond’s chilling impersonation of Hitler as if he were making an impassioned speech to the Nazi Youth Brigade, though Raymond insists his speech was merely theatrical provocation.

Peace Counselor Whalen has nonetheless persuaded the history teacher to let her talk to the young man, and persuade him to embrace a more pacifist perspective. Raymond appears in her office just as she was about to leave to see Le Mis with her live-in (but still non-committal) boyfriend. Raymond challenges her to stay, and she soon acquiesces to his insistence.

Over the course of the play’s 90 minutes (without intermission), the confrontation between the two of them advances and retreats and ultimately escalates to an urgency that has become achingly real in schools across the continent. Yet, rarely is the anguished reasoning of disaffected and marginalized youth presented as clearly and articulately as it is in RAGE, and keen applause to playwright Riml on her incisive script.

Under Director Joe Banno’s able direction, Ariana Almajan and Marlow Vilchez excel at the verbal & eventually physical dual between them. As the 38-year-old, engaged-but-not-married peace educator Laura Whalen, Almajan brings a persuasive single-mindedness the role. Indeed, her character’s very identity, as well as her livelihood, depend on her unflinching embrace of peace and the promise of pacifism to quiet the heady waters of our times. She is at once calm, compassionate, insistent, and explosive. Marlow Vilchez’s portrayal of the young man Raymond embodies the accumulated outrage of the outcast. Vilchez fills the character of Raymond with brooding intelligence and grim conclusions disallowed by officialdom. Disillusioned and angry beyond what his young consciousness can bear, Vilchez brings Raymond’s pain full throttle onstage.

Set & Lighting Designer Jonathan Rushbrook has created an appropriately dreary, low-light basement space, and Sound Designer George Gordon gives us a precise and convincing soundscape. Costume Designer Sigridur Johannesdottir has clad the actors in contemporary attire that clearly evokes each the character’s personalities. Special applause to Stage Fight Choreographer Cliff Williams for the deft and effective physical confrontations.

A grueling, unwavering gaze at the limitations of ideology and the tragedy of marginalization, RAGE brings us to the brink.

Photo by Vak Radev.

Through November 16, 2014, at Flashpoint’s Mead Theatre Lab, 916 G St, NW

Tickets & information http://www.instantseats.com/index.cfm?r=D76A&fuseaction=home.venue&venueID=280

Advisories: Physical violence and strong language and content.

Appropriate for ages 15 and above.

Ariana Almajan as counselor Laura Whalen as and Marlowe Vilchez as Raymond (Rage) Stitt in Rage (Photo Credit: Val Radev)

It is not every day that many of us find ourselves staring down the nozzle of a gun from either side of the trigger, but if you go see Rage at Ambassador Theater–and you should go see it–then that is exactly what you will experience. Guns, violence and the puzzle of peace face to face, close up and personal. Written by critically acclaimed Canadian playwright Michele Riml, this two-person, award-winning play is directed by Joe Banno and produced by Hanna Bondarewska for the Ambassador Theater’s 5th season and the play’s US premiere.

Laura Whalen, played by Ariana Almajan, is a perky, pretty-in-pink high school counselor who enshrines Gandhi in her office and follows a pacifist lifestyle. At the play’s opening, her workday has drawn near its close, and though mentally checked out and ready to go enjoy the play Les Miserable with her boyfriend, she has one last appointment to squeeze in: the troubled Raymond. When Raymond comes in, we quickly learn two things; that he prefers to be called “Rage,” and that he gave a violent presentation in class and may be expelled. Before the session is over, Rage takes Laura hostage at gunpoint and tells her only one of them will be leaving the room. Who gets to leave is her choice. Will she choose to die at his hand for her pacifist lifestyle, or will she kill him and save herself, and presumably, others?

‘Rage’ is wonderfully executed, terrifyingly brilliant, and seriously scary.

Almajan gives such an excellent performance as Laura that at the beginning you might think, wow, she is not that good of an actress. You rapidly realize, however, that she is acting as someone who is poorly pretending to be someone and something she is not. With the shedding of layers, Ariana creates a character in Laura that is so real and vivid that the experience of it will likely leave you raw and shaken along with her.

Vilchez, playing Rage, will leave you rapt and held at terrified attention with his explosive performance. “I go off,” Rage comments, and throughout the play you never know when he will “go off” again, how many more times he might blow up and what he might do to Laura as she struggles desperately to find a way for them both to live.

Almajan and Vilchez allow the audience to step into their shoes and experience with them the situation unfolding in the tiny basement office. “If you can get in someone’s head, you have a better chance of understanding them,” Rage says towards the play’s opening, defending his presentation. This is exactly the idea of this production, and the artistic director, Hanna, hopes that in watching the play, a space for dialogue can open up and audiences will start engaging in the questions that shape the play. Rage allows the audience to step for a very long, unforgettable moment into the shoes of the gun wielders so often taking over the headlines and to experience what having to make life and death choices is like, and to question our own beliefs. To paraphrase one line of the play, “It’s easy to have ideas when you’re not confronted with anything,” and Ragedefinitely confronts the ideas society has built up around violence and peace.

Everything within this production pulls audience members into the experience of Rage; the spot-on lighting and sound effects; the intimate set that lets audiences practically sit in the closet-office with the action; the fast-fired dialogue and completely natural reactions of the characters–even the occasional joke or witticism that has the audience laughing in the darkness. Even the subtle details echo and engrave the heart of the play, like the way that Laura goes from happy-pink cheerfulness with tied back, tight hair at the beginning to an unbuttoned, colourless, messy haired, utterly undone being as Rage wreaks havoc on her and her beliefs. “You can’t be who you are with a gun in your face,” Laura screams back at Rage as he yells at her again about “being peace.” “Why not?” He asks her back. “There was always a gun somewhere.”

This gun itself; you, too, will come face to face with it due to the intimate set. From every angle of the stage, looking up and down its nose, watching it wave, waiting for it to go off along with Rage. There is nothing sheltering about this production, it is a powerful piece with no holds barred. This is Halloween, and everything right now is all about cool costumes and the scare factor. But if you really like scary and you want to be scared, then come see this production. Rage is wonderfully executed, terrifyingly brilliant, and seriously scary. Don’t expect to walk away unscathed: this is theatre at its most palpable.