A revolution without an end game misses the mark,
but only by this much.

Babes With Blades, a theatre company that uses stage combat to create striking, thought-provoking theatre, presents a world premiere production at the Edge Theatre in Edgewater. Ensemble member Jillian Leff’s The Mark is a dystopian drama that examines a society that descended into martial law in the aftermath of unspecified events that have destroyed society as we know it. In the chaos of surviving humanity, those with militaristic skills have risen to take charge and as is usual in these situations, once power has been obtained it is not yielded and in the present time of the play, the country has stayed in stasis for multiple generations after control was first yielded to the army.

 Amy Johnson, MJ Handsome

The Mark opens in media res with a training exercise in which recruits pick an opponent from the regiment and fight them. The winner is accepted into the army and “marked” as a visible sign of their increased stature. The mark resembles an inverted Y, drawn on the face with red pigment. The loser is sent back to live with the Laborers; the descriptor used for the civilian portion of the settlement.

(front) MJ Handsome, Whit Baxter Bates,
(back) Izis Mollinedo, Jennifer Mohr, Matt Chester, Shane Richlen

Soon we are introduced to a baker, Jonas, and his feisty daughter, Raina. Quick to anger, and quicker to speak back, she is, much to her surprise, given an opportunity to join The Army. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem like there is much of a difference in the quality of life between those in The Army and the Laborers. What there is, is power, respect, and the chance to shape society in the manner of their choosing.

Tamarus Harvell, MJ Handsome 

Richard Costes’ direction is a bit uneven. Far too much time is spent on scene changes, or maybe that’s a way of saying that the play shifts between locations much too often. Regardless, the frequency of the changes affects the pacing of the play. The fight direction by Hazel Monson is excellent—they’re not called Babes With Blades for nothing—but again, there’s too much of it. The opening scene, for example, is more or less repeated with a different set of combatants and higher stakes later in the show. At over two hours with an intermission, The Mark could use some trimming.

Whit Baxter Bates, Shane Richlen 

Costes is much better with his actors: MJ Handsome is perfectly cast as Raina giving a spiky, intelligent performance, and as her soft-spoken father, Tamarus Harvell is excellent as well but the most interesting characters and performances come from The Army. As a fellow recruit, Whit Baxter Bates does fine work, bringing necessary energy and likability to the first act, and genuine anger and loathing to the second. Maureen Yasko as Cain is tightly controlled, both in her expressions and in her movement, keeping her cards close to her chest—something that’s necessitated by the plot—and Amy Johnson, as the Commander, walks away with the show, delivering the most complex performance of the production. I rolled my eyes at the one-note renderings of Maxwell (who is fleshed out a bit more in Act II) and Peters (who is not), but that is not the fault of the respective actors who do the best that can be done with the parts. And further kudos to the entire cast for soldiering through an appallingly ill-mannered and disruptive audience, who were intrusive to the point that the actors stumbled over their lines multiple times.

Maureen Yasko, Nicky Jasper 

Expertly choreographed fight scenes aside, The Mark is packed with fascinating ideas, especially in the vastly superior first act. Leff is not merely content to let her dystopian drama play itself out. Coincidentally, this would be the second play I watched within a few hours that was focused on revolutions and reconfiguration of society. While the other—Zayd Dohrn and Tom Morello’s Revolution(s) at the Goodman—was more focused on burning it down, The Mark wrestles with a trickier problem: once everything is reduced to rubble, how do we build it back again? The conversations between the Commander and Raina get down to surprisingly detailed arguments, focusing not on the broad overarching picture, but on the first steps to get there. It’s a gripping back and forth and I found myself despairing as the ideas were gradually shunted aside in favor of the increasingly convoluted plot. The second act was enjoyable enough just to see the increasingly absurd plot twists unraveled (just don’t think too much about the logic behind them and you’ll be fine), and the actors and the action sequences are great, but at least for me it was a letdown after Act I. There is a half-hearted attempt to reset at the end but the silliness of how Raina gets to where she is, undermines it.

The crowd-pleasing ending is not always the most interesting one.

The ensemble of THE MARK:
(front) Jennifer L. Mickelson, Jennifer Mohr; (back) Shane Richlen,
Matt Chester, Izis Mollinedo, Fin Coe , Nicky Jasper and Amy Johnson

The Mark
Babes With Blades Theatre Company
The Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway
2 hours and 10 minutes with intermission
ends on November 22, 2025
for tickets ($28-$35) visit Babes With Blades