How did so many great playwrights, from Eugene O’Neill to Noel Coward, get through the 20th century without putting a psychiatrist character in their plays? If Tennessee Williams were writing his one-act “Suddenly Last Summer” today, the medical doctor Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift in the 1959 film version) would not have to use a truth serum to get Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor in the film) to remember the lurid details of Sebastian’s violent murder at the hands of cannibals. Cukrowicz would be a shrink, and have no trouble getting Catherine to spill the beans about her dead gay cousin.
Psychiatrist characters in modern plays and films are something of a dramatic cheat, except when they’re objects of parody or ridicule. It’s an easy way for a writer to get the shrink’s patient to reveal in record time his or her motivations and most intimate thoughts.
In her 2024 play, “Pre-Existing Condition, playwright Marin Ireland not only gives us a psychiatrist; she has her lead character attend several group support sessions for battered women. A revival of Ireland’s 75-minute one-act play opened Monday at the Greenwich House Theater, and it gets the star treatment with Lupita Nyong’o playing a woman who has suffered domestic violence from a former boyfriend. The Oscar-winning actor (“12 Years a Slave”) performs in “Pre-Existing Condition” for only a few weeks, to be replaced in the following months by Edie Falco and others.
Known only as “A,” the lead character undergoes one-on-one sessions with her psychiatrist (Dael Orlandersmith, being very majesterial) and also group support sessions led by two women (Sarah Steele and Orlandersmith). It’s a true marathon of psychoanalysis, and Nyong’o delivers a really big, very busy performance. There are a lot of secrets to be revealed and Nyong’o doesn’t let one of them go without putting up a major fight. It’s a performance replete with exaggerated hand gestures and fraught facial expressions.
Maria Dizzia’s direction gives a nice surreal quality to the proceedings by having Orlandersmith and Steele hang around on the set for a few moments before and after their respective characters deliver their lines. They are joined by the multi-cast Greg Keller, who not only gets to portray past and potential boyfriends but A’s mother. Why Orlandersmith isn’t cast in this role – her age and sex are appropriate – remains a mystery. Keller, on the other hand, plays Mom with the same quirky line readings that he brings to all the male characters.
In addition to being a co-group leader, Steele plays a close friend of A’s, who doesn’t show much empathy for her battered friend by constantly asking A why she has no empathy for the ex-boyfriend who beat her. He’s really sorry, A is told more than twice.
The friend’s support of the male abuser brings up a question that, apparently, no one involved in “Pre-Existing Condition” ever considered. Maybe A just has bad taste in people. My advice is that A get rid of this female friend as fast as she got rid of that abusive boyfriend.
Late in “Pre-Existing Condition,” one of Orlandersmith’s authoritarian characters tells A, “Don’t forget that there’s a lot of manipulation happening here. He still has some control over you. Especially when you’re alone. His voice is still in your head. That keeps you in relationship with him, and that means you don’t have to grieve yet.”
Ireland hasn’t written a play. “Pre-Existing Condition” is a P.S.A.
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