When We Were Young & Unafraid

"When We Were Young & Unafraid" at Custom Made Theatre provides the best possible example of why you should sometimes warn audiences about certain content. In this case, domestic abuse and sexual assault.

Not just because this 2014 play, written by Sarah Treem and directed by Stacy Ward (who did the bizarre but enthralling "The Thrush & the Woodpecker" at Custom Made a few years ago), deals intimately with those intimate topics.

But also because it anatomizes certain truths about that kind of trauma, chiefly that it may change who you are and even, seemingly, the world you live in.

Stacy Ross – probably the single best working actor in the Bay Area but perhaps not the best in this play – plays Agnes, a starkly self-sufficient innkeeper running a B&B on a secluded island.

Because of its remoteness she volunteers her place as a refuge for women fleeing domestic abuse. As the play opens she takes in Mary Anne (Liz Frederick), a young Midwestern wife on the run from her alcoholic Army vet husband.

Makeup designer Brooke Jennings paints Frederick with graphic facial bruises. In "Young & Unafraid's" first moment of deeply engraved tension, Agnes ably stitches her face at the kitchen table in the dead of night while her daughter Penny – more on her in a minute – fruitlessly tries to comfort Mary Ann with stories of the island's magical history.

Ward renders it as a truly riveting moment, crowded with feelings all hanging on the tip on the literal tip of a needle.

But it ends too soon, the lights coming down for a scene change just as it was starting to feel real. In fact this happens a lot in "Young & Unafraid," with perhaps a third of the scenes crashing into sudden conclusions.

Agnes, so resolute in every other thing, exists in a (pardon the term) no man's land with her teenage daughter, played by student actor Zoe Foulks. Anyone who remembers their own teenage years will immediately recognize the tone of aggression disguised as tentativeness the pair employ around the kitchen table in the mornings.

Tension: the real breakfast of champions.

More than anything this is a play about boundaries getting crossed. The family takes Mary Ann in but at the same time she's by default a disruptive presence.

She accepts their help out of necessity, but their polarized sensibilities mean Mary Ann can't help but feel Agnes is infringing on her too, which she channels into attempts to mentor Penny with advice about men that opens the door for potential disaster.

Two other intruders occupy the house, one a hapless tourists (Matt Hammons, the hammy narrator from "Best Little Whorehouse In Texas" at 42nd Street Moon last year) and the other Hannah, a feminist separatist revolutionary who for some reason can't seem to stop hanging around.

Renee Rogoff as Hannah isn't afforded nearly the space in the show she deserves. She's the only person who brings occasional levity to the program, and she gives Ross opportunities to stretch her wings that the rest of the show doesn't.

Sadly she's offstage for the bulk of the proceedings. "Young & Unafraid" is a bit of a shell game, leaving you to wonder which of the many, many relationships you're supposed to be keeping your eye on during the action.

Presumably the answer is all of them, but there's too much going on in Treem's script to really give everybody the grist that they need.

For example, this is a good time to mention that the show is actually set in the early 1970s, with the women's movement supposedly providing crucial context.

But in truth almost everything in this show could be transplanted to the 21st century without alteration. Other than the persuasively retro Bernadette Flynn-dseigned set swaddled in wood paneling, the period doesn't add much.

The only big revelation in this fearless but conflicted story about the no-win gambit of simply being a woman is Frederick, who is both captivating and horrifying.

We usually expect fictional figures to be transparent and easily engaged, but of course real people are anything but.

Treem and Ward make Mary Ann as replete with complications and contradictions as any real person, but Frederick is the one who untangles the knot and lets everyone into her experience.

The results may leave audience shaken, and possibly – hopefully – reflecting on "When We Were Young & Unafraid" long into the future.

"When We Were Young & Unafraid" runs through February 9 at the Custom Made Theatre, 533 Sutter Street in San Francisco. For tickets and information, call 415-798-2682 or visit http://www.custommade.org