Silly me—I thought that a dark comedy featuring an “empathy coach” hired to bring harmony to a corporate office would more likely offer a parody of our safe-space culture than a call for more fear and loathing of our privileged oppressors.
I say “our” because I happen to be female, and the particular source of privilege and oppression in Do You Feel Anger?, by the young playwright Mara Nelson-Greenberg, is that most au courant of targets, the Y chromosome. Men come in different sizes and colors in Anger, but they are all unrelenting, unrepentant creeps—I’d use a stronger word if standards allowed—and the women all, ultimately, victims.
Granted, Anger is ostensibly an absurdist play, so I trust that Nelson-Greenberg meant her testosterone-addled bozos to mock, rather than mirror, guys we’d recognize from our own workplaces and personal lives. That the play is set in a debt-collection agency makes the task of introducing empathy seem all the more comically ludicrous, though the heroine, the elegant, lovely Sofia—played by Tiffany Villarin, who carries both qualities in abundance—sustains her determination for what feels, despite Anger‘s 90-minute duration, like a very long time.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★ review here.]
Not that Sofia isn’t warned. Eva, the only female employee who attends her coaching sessions, refers to someone “mugging” her repeatedly, and to a colleague, also a woman (about whom we will learn more later), who has taken seemingly permanent refuge in the bathroom. Like the other characters, Eva—a bundle of nerves and forced good cheer whom the gifted Megan Hill, under Margot Bordelon’s overeager direction, keeps on the brink of hysteria—tends to overshare; in the play’s first scene, she reveals that she dated a serial killer to “avoid a bad work environment,” or prevent getting hit on in the office. Her ex “started cheating on me—mostly getting hundreds of blowjobs from other women” before setting off on his murdering spree, Eva adds.
Fellatio is a recurring motif in the play, a symbol of men’s selfishness and subjugation of women. Office manager Jon, made suitably unctuous by Greg Keller, reads aloud a personal text message that Sofia has inexplicably shown him, in which her father reveals that he has started a second family with another woman, because her mother objected to “blowjobs without reciprocation”—a phrase that is used over and over in the message, and repeated several more times later for good measure.
The main problem with Anger as a comedy, in fact, is that it is just absurd—as opposed to provocative or trenchant or, frankly, all that funny. One of Eva’s coworkers, Jordan (a gamely goofy Ugo Chukwu), introduces himself to Sofia with, “It’s a pleasure for you to meet me.” Another dude, Howie (Justin Long, more menacing), greets her giddily with, “I have a terrible temper,” before announcing he’d like to have sex with her. Later, when Sofia notices there’s no place to dispose of tampons in the bathroom, Jon has to call a female receptionist to learn what “periods” are, and is traumatized by her response. “Just tell me you made the whole thing up, Missy!” he demands.
Nelson-Greenberg is not an untalented writer; there is some cleverness in her wordplay and her use of malapropisms and mispronunciation to suggest concepts foreign to her male characters, and the general disorientation produced by the notion of empathy in a modern work environment. Sofia knows she has made some headway when Jordan speaks of feeling “vulner-ah-blay” while asking a woman out.
That progress proves fleeting, though, as even Sofia emerges as prey to the sort of Stockholm syndrome Nelson-Greenberg portrays—comedically, yes, but also with a clear and increasing sense of urgency —in women’s interaction with the opposite sex. Sofia, while keeping in touch with her cad of a dad, ignores a series of phone calls from her mother, relayed with chipper desperation by Jeanne Sekata. Tom Aulino turns up as a very, very old man who tries to explain the origin of men’s aggressive, destructive impulses. “If I were 40 years younger, I’d find a way to really hurt you,” he tells Eva. “But I’m not 90 anymore.”
Do You Feel Anger concludes with a compelling twist, albeit one that draws on some of the oldest tropes about female fantasies and repression. Without giving away too much, it involves a mermaid costume (designed by Emilio Sosa, who fashions character-appropriate office attire for the other scenes) and a vast backdrop in which shades of blue, alternately fanciful and soothing, replace Laura Jellinek’s otherwise neutral, functional set.
For the umpteenth time, we get a supposedly feminist vision that emphasizes victimhood over any real prospects for “empowerment,” to dangle a favorite cliché. Do I feel anger about that? Irritation, perhaps—and hope that intelligent, engaged voices like Nelson-Greenberg’s can deliver more fleshed-out, nuanced work over time.
Do You Feel Anger opened April 2, 2019, at the Vineyard Theater and runs through November 18. Tickets and information: vineyardtheatre.org
