Female characters don’t come more complicated or nuanced than the central role in Marin Ireland’s subtle firecracker of a play Pre-Existing Condition. Identified only as A in the script, she seems hamstrung by the assault by a longtime boyfriend that left her with a black eye and an inchoate sense of what she should do next. Her circumstance becomes more complicated as she meets with a variety of people, lawyers and counselors and therapists and friends, who lay out a daunting array of options and opinions.
A is an Everywoman whose inability to process her feelings, or identify her desires, makes her absolutely relatable. It also makes her a dream role for actresses ranging from Lupita Nyong’o to Edie Falco to Phillipa Soo (who will all assume the role in the coming weeks and months at Off Broadway’s Greenwich House Theater). The repertory casting, launched with an earlier Off Off Broadway production two years ago in an even smaller venue, seems to be a deliberate effort to underscore the universality of the heroine’s experience.
Nyong’o brings a kind of wide-eyed innocence to the role, portraying a woman who can’t quite believe she’s found herself in this situation and is flummoxed with how to process it. We see her clinging to walls and corners as she enters group therapy sessions, or splaying her hands across her blue-jeaned thighs when sitting down with a sympathetic therapist (Dael Orlandersmith, exuding maternal warmth). And we also see her responding in real time to encounters with friends and acquaintances who offer varying levels of understanding and support, including female friends (played by plain-spoken Sarah Steele), who note that he’s already apologized and therefore she should “probably just move on.”
That’s easier said than done, of course. From her posture to her tentative responses to questions, Nyong’o captures the ambivalence of a woman who cannot see a clear path forward given the particulars of her situation. Yes, her ex struck her and blackened her eye. But she didn’t go to the police right away and a legal case seems daunting if not unwinnable. And she remembers slapping him in an argument a few days before his punch. And her circumstances seem trivial compared to some of the other women in her group session who endured much harsher abuse for much longer periods of time before escaping to shelters.
Opening up about her experience brings its own hazards — whether it’s with friends who turn out to be unsympathetic or others who use her confession to press their own advantage. Needless to say, early dates with even sensitive guys trigger emotional alarm bells the moment intimacy emerges as more than theoretical. You see her flinch at the slightest touch, and recoil into herself in a self-protective crouch. Greg Keller, playing a variety of male characters, nails the broad range of reactions of men who even when they have the best intentions seem hamstrung in the face of such vulnerability.
Ireland, who based the play on her own well-publicized experience with an actor-boyfriend during a London production. has written an actorly play that allows its entire cast to shine. (Maria Dizzia, a director with a background in acting, pries masterfully nuanced performances from the entire cast.) We meet a broad range of people who are messy and well-meaning and contradictory and unaware of how they’re falling short of their own ideals. That’s especially true of A, who ultimately learns to embrace the process of recovery and recognize that she need not to stick to any timetable to move past her trauma, if she ever does at all.
She also learns to reframe the central question of what she wants. Is it money? Revenge? Sympathy? To just get over it already? For Ireland, the act of writing this play — of giving voice to women who find themselves in similar impossible circumstances — suggests another path forward. Where shadows and nuance blur your vision, shed a searingly bright ray of light. ★★★★★
PRE-EXISTING CONDITION
Greenwich House Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through December 19 for $49 to $179