Review Roundup: DEGENERATES World Premiere Off-Broadway

Playwrights Horizons is presenting the world premiere of Else Went’s Degenerates, directed by Emma Rosa Went, through October 11. This world premiere play brings audiences into a group forged around their own perceived unlovability. Between the closed worlds of bedrooms and the digital silos they open onto, painfully intimate conversations unfold, as Degenerates burrows into the extreme side of the epidemic of male loneliness.

In their obscure corner of the internet, Degenerates’ characters offer each other proof that the game is rigged against men: it was over before it began, they will never be loved, better just to lay down and rot. When an unexpected relationship begins to form, the consequences of these boys’ fatalism are made abundantly clear. Degenerates offers a telescopic, darkly funny view of one insular community, formed on the bedrock of shared and infinite miseries. See what the critics are saying…

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Else Went has a real knack for bringing audiences inside the headspace of outcasts and rejects; a voiceover (by Barresi) intoning stage directions and character moods reinforces her stylized approach to storytelling. Her first play, the five-hour-plus epic Initiative, followed turn-of-the-millennium high schoolers playing Dungeons & Dragons to work through their feelings about themselves and life’s big questions. Even at three hours (in not exactly comfortable wooden seats at Playwrights Horizons), Degenerates never drags during its similarly immersive dive into contemporary youth culture. That’s due not only to the writing but also to Emma Rose Went’s thoughtful, well-paced direction.

Loren Noveck, ExeuntNYC: But the thing is, that doesn’t make them unique. And in a week where the news is all about a woman being gang-raped by a bunch of fraternity brothers who suffered minimal-to-no consequences, I want more of the “why”–Why do these men proceed down this dark path? Why does the idea of being labeled “unlovable” become a national concern only when it’s men who experience it? And why should my empathy for them so far outstrip their empathy for every woman alive? Degenerates gives us a glimpse under their hood, but doesn’t answer the questions it raises.

Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: Its downbeat nature and frank sexuality make Degenerates an unlikely work for popularity, but likely second stages among the more daring regional theaters will produce it in the future, but probably not as smartly as staged here and now at Playwrights Horizons.

Caroline Cao, New York Theatre Guide: In an achievement for a 100-minute first half, Degenerates compellingly slow-burns toward Target and Miller’s baring of bodies and souls. Target’s soft-spoken seduction and Miller’s attraction are awkward, taut, and filled with psychosexual tension. Ostensibly, sex might fulfill them: Miller can reach his masculine destiny, and Target can seal his self-imposed destiny as a subjugated girl (as Miller puts it, “Can’t get a girlfriend? Become the girlfriend”). However, their consummation unlocks a Pandora’s box of self-reckoning — punctuated by the set pieces quaking apart in heartbreak.

Chantal Mann, Washington Square News: If live theater is the art of empathy, Went’s biggest triumph is her ability to make these unlovable characters matter to her audience — and remind us that there is less between us and these so-called degenerates than we care to admit.

Average Rating: 72.0%

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