Off-B'way Review: Degenerates; The Hairy Ape

Zachary Desmond and Christopher Dylan White
in Degenerates.
Credit: Jackie Abbott

Though they were written a century apart, Else Went’s Degerenates (at Playwrights Horizons) and Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (now in revival at Irish Repertory Theater) both address the alienation of young men and their resultant violence and self-destruction. Whether it’s Went’s outraged online community of incels (involuntary celebrates) or O’Neill brutish coal stoker Yank, the anger engendered by their feeling of being left behind by the larger culture leads to the same frustration and desire to strike back. Both playwrights document their blind rage and aching need with compassion and depth in productions staged with imagination and prickly fire.

Went’s frightening vision of isolated, screen-obsessed youths takes place in a fractured void where communication in real life, or IRL as the characters would say, is rare and potentially dangerous. Significantly, we first encounter them as voices in the dark. The despondent Kemp (a brilliantly devastated Tyler Nowell Felix), friendless and unable to attract a girlfriend, desperately phones a suicide prevention hotline. His aching need to be loved is unrelieved by the anonymous counselor on the other end (Olivia Rose Barressi plays all the females roles). After Kemp howls out his anger and sorrow, we enter into the cyber world of his fellow incels, spewing venom and disgust at women for rejecting them. Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ splintered set depicts the stark environment of these frustrated souls. Miller (intensely snarling and magnetic Zachary Desmond) inhabits a barren basement apartment in his parents’ house while girly, agoraphobic Target (sympathetic and sweet Christopher Dylan White) snuggles in a nest of plush stuffed animals and a riot of anime posters. In a group chat with Miller and Target, Kemp is still unseen as is Serge (Juan Arturo) who is rejected from the group when it’s revealed he is divorced and has a child, meaning unlike his online misogynist compatriots, he has had sex.

The dynamic between Miller, Target and Kemp shifts several times throughout the play as they seek comfort from each other and then push away when they get too close. Went treats these sometimes nasty, sometimes relatable guys with a balanced hand. We see their sexist, racist rage but also the cruel treatment they’ve received. Miller and Kemp recount horrific childhood encounters with girls that still pain them. Like Anne Washburne in her play Anon, Went depicts a culture where people are unable to exist without validation from social media. At one point, Target watches and rewatches coming out as trans to his sister as if to confirm the experience really happened.

Christopher Dylan White and Zachary Desmond
in Degenerates.
Credit: Jackie Abbott

Director Emma Rose Went (the playwright’s partner) creates striking stage pictures and interactions as MacAdams’ set splits apart and joins together, Jiyoun Chang’s lighting blazes and shocks and Angela Baughman’s sound design rattles and disorients, reflecting the fragmented psyches of the incels. I could have done without the narrated stage directions (read by Barresi) which felt like the playwright imposing her voice on the action, also White was too often barely audible in the tiny Peter Jay Sharp Theater, marring an otherwise shattering performance. But these were the only flaws in a disturbing, trenchant and multi-layered portrait of an overlooked but human subculture. 

Jon Beavers in The Hairy Ape.
Credit: Carol Rosegg

Though on the surface, Eugene O’Neill’s Yank is nothing like the nerdy loners of Went’s play, he is just as lonely and longing for connection as his 21st century counterparts. Written in 1922, The Hairy Ape, O’Neill’s bizarre, expressionist work, also chronicles the boiling resentment engendered by an unequal society. In Went’s world it’s based on looks and in O’Neill’s, it’s wealth that calls the tune. Yank (muscular, explosive Jon Beavers) brags of his physical strength and dominance as a coal stoker on a transatlantic liner. He boasts that he’s the one that drives the ship at a then-staggering 25 knots an hour, not the captain or the rich passengers. But his bravado is decimated when dilettante heiress Mildred Douglas (sharply scalding Elizabeth Teeter) descends below decks and calls him a “filthy beast.” The once confident laborer feels left behind and he aimlessly seeks revenge against Mildred and her class, but never achieves it, finally meeting his end in an encounter with an actual ape in the Bronx Zoo. 

As director Ciaran O’Reilly points out in a program note, O’Neill uses the word “belong” 47 times in the script. Yank thought he belonged but Mildred’s taunt reduces his image of himself, and like Went’s incels he responds with unbridled rage.

Elizabeth Teeter and Jon Beavers in
The Hairy Ape.
Credit: Carol Rosegg

In addition to Beavers’ powerful portrayal of the impulsive Yank, John Keating and Ariyan Kassam are believably intense as his oppressed shipmates. O’Reilly ingeniously employs Irish Rep’s postage-stamp-sized stage space to create Yank’s cramped, confined world of smoke and ash, with Charlie Corcoran’s set transforming into the hellish bowels of the ship and the blaring nightmare of Jazz Age Manhattan, illuminated by Michael Gottlieb’s stark lighting. At one point the upper reaches of the ship, bearing Mildred and her repressive aunt (a grim Joanna Glushak) lounging in deck chairs, lowers over Yank and his fellow stokers, literally crushing them. There are also effective uses of shadow (clever lighting by Michael Gottlieb) and stylized movement (credited to Barry McNabb) in this fascinating modern take on O’Neill’s cry of despair, echoing into our cyber-centric century. 

Degenerates: Sept. 29—Nov. 8. Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 45 mins. including intermission. playwrightshorizons.org.

The Hairy Ape: Oct. 4—Dec. 6. Irish Repertory Theater, 132 W. 22nd St., NYC. Running time: 90 mins with no intermission. irishrep.org.