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.)     

B'way Update: Collaboration, & Juliet, Almost Famous

Summertime and the livin' is easy. Fewer shows are opening so my life isn't quite so hectic. But we do have some news of Broadway openings and changes for the fall season. Two productions from London have confirmed Broadway transfers and a previously announced new musical has landed a theater and shifted its dates.

Jeremy Pope and Paul Bettany
in The Collaboration.
Credit: Marc Brenner

The Collaboration, a new play by Oscar nominee Anthony McCarten (The Two Popes, The Theory of Everything, Bohemian Rhapsody) focusing on the relationship between artists Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, will open on Broadway as part of Manhattan Theater Club's season at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater after a hit London run at the Young Vic. Previews begin Nov. 29 in advance of a Dec. 20 opening. McCarten is also the book-author of A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical which will open Dec. 4 at the Broadhurst.

Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope will repeat their London performances as Warhol and Basquiat. The play, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of the Young Vic, takes place in 1984 when the two influential artists were working together on what would become one of the most famous exhibitions in modern art history. Bettany, best known for his film work including several Marvel Universe films as The Vision and A Knight's Tale, A Beautiful Mind and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, will be making his Broadway debut. Pope recently achieved the rare feat of receiving two Tony nominations in the same season--for Choir Boy and Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. He also received an Emmy nomination for the Netflix mini-series, Hollywood. 

The Collaboration will follow MTC's staging of Cost of Living at the Friedman, but no specific dates have been announced yet for that production. 

Note: While this show adds to the number of new British plays planned for Broadway, there are no new original American plays which have not been seen previously Off-Broadway, with definite Broadway dates for 2022-23.