Off-B'way Review: Pre-Existing Condition; In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Lupita Nyong'o in Pre-Existing Condition.
Credit: Jessica Kourkounis

Marin Ireland is one of our most versatile and talented actresses, usually turning up as conflicted and struggling mothers, daughters, wives, or girlfriends in perceptive, searing Off-Broadway plays. With her play Pre-Existing Condition, now at the Greenwich House Theater after an engagement at the tiny Connelly Center last season, she joins the ranks of promising playwrights. In 80 shattering minutes, she documents the wrenching experience of an unnamed woman A, vainly attempting to come to terms with exiting a toxic relationship after her ex assaulted her. The protagonist turns to the law, counseling, therapy, friends, and new relationships, but none offers her resolution or closure. “I don’t know what I want,” she cries more than once. Often she tells whoever will listen (except her distant mother whom she can’t bring herself to tell about the violence she has endured) she just wants the feeling of powerlessness and victimization to go away. But there is no resolution other than the slow process of unpacking her emotions and facing them. 

Ireland painstakingly documents A’s journey through rage, self-blame, and guilt through a

Lupita Nyong'o and Jeff Keller in
Pre-Existing Condition.
Credit: Jessica Kourkounis

series of short, fragmented scenes that flow smoothly thanks to Maria Dizzia’s subtle, graceful staging and Isabella Byrd’s sensitive lighting. The entire play takes place on Cate McCrea’s bare set which resembles a nondescript, support-group meeting room. The play opens with A leaving numerous voicemail messages for a lawyer. He finally returns her calls and informs her there is little legal recourse for her situation since there were no outside witnesses, the police weren’t called, and the laws are antiquated. From there A tentatively embarks on dating, attends individual and group therapy sessions and meets with a friend offering an apology from the former boyfriend. 

In an interesting casting choice, the lead role will be played by a series of different performers during the show’s limited engagement. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o opens the run and delivers a complex, deeply-felt performance as A. She charts the main character’s circuitous path from numbness to rage to hard-won reflection. She  bubbles with anger, flirts with humor, and hards back tears. She jiggles her leg nervously in one scene, giggles with suppressed anxiety during a first, tentative date in the next. A bravura range of reactions to a ruptured romance. (Philipa Soo, Edie Falco, Hari Nef, and Susanna Flood will follow.)     

The supporting cast of three play all the remaining roles with dexterity. Greg Keller displays his versatility by doubling as A’s sympathetic new suitor and switching genders as her chatty, self-absorbed mother. He endows the former with empathy and stretches the latter beyond stereotype. Dael Orlandersmith exudes compassion and professionalism as the cool yet motherly therapist and Sarah Steele (who happens to pregnant, though her characters are not) lends authority as the group leader and ably plays devil’s advocate as the friend sympathizing with the ex-lover. 

Sarah Steele and Dael Orlandersmith in
Pre-Existing Condition.
Credit: Jessica Kourkounis

At one point, A explains she cannot receive insurance payments for trauma in the future because it is now a pre-existing condition for her. That’s Ireland’s haunting point, that the devastation may lessen but will never leave.

Roger Guenveur Smith offers a similarly brief but powerful piece of theater with his solo play, In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat at New York Theater Workshop. Running about an hour, Smith’s poem-elegy is a rumination on his friendship with the revolutionary artist Basquiat who blazed brightly before expiring at the age of 27. Standing downstage right in Raphael Mishler’s bare but evocative set, Smith begins by recreating his elevator-operator father’s advice to his younger self when he revealed he wanted to be an actor. His dad tells him he doesn’t understand the son’s choice but if he’s going to be a performer, then like his pal Jean-Michel, he should be the best artist he can possibly be.

Roger Guenveur Smith in
In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

From there, Smith launches on an intoxicating, rap-like monologue, part autobiography, part social history, documenting Basquiat’s meteoric rise in the art world and the oppression faced by the African-American and immigrant communities. Smith sometimes employs his dad’s place of employment—the elevator—as a metaphor for Basquiat’s journey. With the aural background of Marc Anthony Thompson’s jazz-like live sound design and Arlo Sanders’ versatile lighting, Smith rides like a surfer on a wave of words.

His journey takes in Basquiat’s dizzying impact on pop culture and Smith’s parallel sojourn as a West Coast-based spoken word artist under the name of HollyWatts (combining Hollywood and Watts). His observations on the volatile cultural and political scene of the 1980s are delivered with a silly smooth eloquence and a passionate plea for understanding.  

Pre-Existing Condition: Sept. 14—Jan. 8, 2027. Greenwich House Theater, 27 Barrow St., NYC. Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission. preexistingconditionplay.com.

In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat: Sept. 14—Oct. 10. New York Theater Workshop, 79 E. 4th St., NYC. Running time: 60 minutes with no intermission. nytw.org.