A young woman alone in a spotlight, seated on the floor, hugging her knees. From the darkness around her comes ragged breathing. Then the breathing builds into harsh, rasping sounds, and four figures can be glimpsed crawling on the bellies toward her. They reach for her and nudge her, like late-night creep-show creatures, and she recoils.

        This opening image of Against My Will – stark, focused, fraught with tension – lays out the fundamentals of what humdrum collective is about: tightly drawn theatrical presentations pulled from basic stage elements and crafted by a team of intrepid young collaborators with imagination, guts, and precision. And that's what keeps your eyes riveted on the stage. The script – a fantasia inside the mind of that girl in the light, who's desperately seeking meaning from existence – is somewhat dense, with the four figures, who appear to represent four aspects of her life, assaulting her with anecdotes and epigrams. Daniel J. Houston's writing, while undeniably intelligent and chewy with language, suffers from the feeling that it's continually circling itself rather than moving forward. Still, the actors give it their all, and with just a ladder, a wheelchair, an apple, and that rope, they and director Erin Meyer deliver a consistently inventive and captivating ensemble work.

– Robert Faires