You’d think Marin Ireland would be content to forge on as one of New York City’s foremost actors, her Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke still unforgettable and only a single instance of her unmissable skills.
But no, it turns out she is a skilled playwright as well. Pre-Existing Condition is evidence that she has those goods. In the tense, 70-minute one-act, she presents a woman identified in the program only as A (Tatiana Maslany at the performance I saw), a young woman recently out of an abusive relationship.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
She’s passing the next few months attempting to come to terms with the lead up to, the experience of, and the aftermath of a physically and emotionally bruising assault. Ireland shows A trying to recover while attending group therapy, consulting legal aid, meeting men in stymied back-to-dating tries, and even receiving a diploma from a course she undertakes.
The major gift Ireland has received as playwright is a keen ear for dialogue. And there’s copious talk dispensed here as therapists, friends, potential new lovers, and more set out to calm, reassure, cajole, sympathize, question, and jolly A out of her endlessly shifting moods.
Ireland is aware that much of the psychological banter spewed in our post-Freudian era can sound, sometimes amusingly, like gobbledygook. Much of it, though pointedly questionable as genuine understanding, may serve as momentarily comforting or, at the least, momentarily intended to be comforting. That’s when it somehow emerges as harmfully provoking.
For a sample of thought worth considering: Character B, played by Dael Orlandersmith as a therapist for the moment, insistently advises the befuddled A during one heated exchange that time, so often said to heal, doesn’t. She says, much more wisely, practically and realistically, that time “passes.”
The canny Pre-Existing Condition result is that Ireland as much as anything else presents a clever satirical screed on how we communicate nowadays. She hears how often we’ve integrated psychological jargon into our discourse and just as often blithely — though, we think, seriously — pass it along as meaningful observation. She’s taken in how regularly we satisfy ourselves with what we have to say, assuming it has more value than it does. The outcome, she implies — maybe as regularly as not — is less broad satisfaction than self-satisfaction.
As the Pre-Existing Condition run continues, A will subsequently be acted by Deirdre O’Connell, Tavi Gevinson, Julia Chan, and Maria Dizzia, I can only report that Maslany sets an extremely high standard. Her face is a billboard across which expressions of temporary pleasure and more tenacious dismay constantly register. It’s remarkable how continually tentative smiles melt into incipient tears. The reverse also occurs. (Has Ireland imagined herself in all the women’s parts? Yes, is the likely answer.)
When A is pressed to accept that the offending ex-boyfriend has sent his apologetic regret, Maslany injects only defiant power, uttering, “I want to hit him.” When A is told the unresolved circumstances are “hard for him,” Maslany makes instant disdain unmistakable.
Appearing throughout the run as B, Orlandersmith is joined by Sarah Steele as C and, for most performances, Greg Keller as D. They’re myriad figures alternately occupying chairs that designer Louisa Thompson supplies as the only set. The chairs are very serviceable when rearranged to indicate various locales. And each player is perfect at delivering the cagily written speeches. Each is perfect at representing whomever they’re meant to be as they weave in and out of A’s pilgrimage toward (evasive) mental health.
As for the above-mentioned Dizzia, she also ranks as a top-drawer New York City actor. Here, however, she demonstrates her prowess as the Pre-Existing Condition director. Her command of Ireland’s unflinchingly probing play is impeccable, suggesting that, as Ireland has a playwrighting career looming, Dizzia has a directing future ahead of her.
During the action, there’s a sequence where B as group leader asks A of the session in progress — and perhaps of the entire undertaking — “Are you getting anything out of it?” The query might even imply that the group leader has her own otherwise unspoken misgivings. A’s answer is equivocal, but there’s nothing equivocal about the memorable understanding audiences will obtain from Marin Ireland’s Pre-Existing Condition.
Pre-Existing Condition opened June 18, 2024, at the Connolly Theater Upstairs and runs through August 3. Tickets and information: preexitingconditionplay.com
