“Get out of my discord shit-stain,” says Miller, a 28-year-old White incel infuriated that one of his group members has violated his only rule: Temet Nosce (“know thyself”). A lot sets off Miller. And it probably doesn’t help that he’s “terribly alone,” according to Else Went’s character description. In fact, the playwright describes all four of the male roles in Degenerates as such. But as the audience discovers over the next two hours and 45 minutes, alone means different things to different people.
Went has a way of going down the rabbit hole and bringing everyone with her. Last year, her five-hour play Initiative earned raves for its nuanced portrayal of a group of high school friends, including a real-time game of Dungeons & Dragons. What Degenerates lacks in comparative length, it compensates for in a meticulous, if occasionally stagnant, unpacking of a rageful generation whose moral compass is trying to catch up with technology.
Terribly alone, together
Most of the action centers on Miller (a captivating and wildly unpredictable Zachary Desmond) and Target (Christopher Dylan White), an online cosplay sex worker struggling with his gender identity.
Unbeknownst to the other members, including the intimacy-craving Kemp (Tyler Nowell Felix), who’s facing his own demons, including suicidal ideation, Miller and Target go on-camera, which inevitably leads to an in-person meeting at Target’s studio apartment, plastered with anime posters. Before it gets ugly, they have “self-conscious” sex, but as Went indicates, “there is a moment where it starts to work.”
A zine, available for free to audience members courtesy of Playwrights Horizons, includes a two-page glossary (the script includes 53 terms plus variants), which is to say, this play asks you to lean in. But if you do, Degenerates dismantles the binary of love and hate.
Degenerates offers an unflinching look at both, with director Emma Rosa Went smartly steering her actors away from what could easily become polarizing tropes. What we’re left with is unsettling, unpredictable, and uncomfortably familiar.
If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
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Is ‘Degenerates’ worth seeing?
Else Went’s Degenerates lingers too long in a few chat windows, but anyone willing to learn its language will find a portrait of loneliness that refuses to sort its characters into villains and victims.
- Playwrights Horizons, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, New York City
- Notable performers: Zachary Desmond, Christopher Dylan White, Tyler Nowell Felix, Juan Arturo, Olivia Rose Barresi
- Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes, including one intermission
- Performances through October 18
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