'Degenerates' Off-Broadway review — love and loneliness have entered the chat

Read our review of Degenerates off Broadway, the newest work from playwright Else Went and director Emma Rosa Went (Initiative), at Playwrights Horizons.

Summary

• Degenerates follows an online community of self-professed unlovable men and what happens when they try to pursue sex and romance offline
• The show stays compelling throughout a slow-burn 3 hours as it explores the consequences of self-loathing and loneliness in an online subculture
• The show is recommended for those interested in stories of the internet's darkest corners and of the Wents' last work, Initiative

What can go wrong when two incels have sex? Playwright Else Went asks that question, and much deeper ones about what it takes for the most "unlovable" people to be open to love, in her new work Degenerates at Playwrights Horizons. She and director Emma Rosa Went, the playwright’s wife, manifest dramatic and darkly comic collisions between incels — a derogatory slang term meaning "involuntary celibates" — and their seismic devastation.

The play opens with a suicide hotline call between a 21-year-old Kemp (Tyler Nowell Felix) and an unseen counselor (Olivia Rose Barresi). The low-lit visibility of Kemp’s shape (evocative lighting is by Jiyoun Chang) serves as a visual microcosm for being unmoored in one’s body. The counselor asks if Kemp has anyone in his life, but unfortunately, Kemp’s companions consist of a few edgelords in a Discord echo chamber.

In the next scene, Kemp is only heard as a voice in a chatroom, where he rants with 28-year-old nihilist Miller (Zachary Desmond, a sack of masculine bitterness) in his dull bedroom; 19-year-old Target (Christopher Dylan White), an effeminate "mentalcel" sequestered in his anime girl-postered apartment; and the unseen 33-year-old "eldercel" Serge (Juan Arturo). Through Went's rapid-fire dialogue peppered with online lingo, the men rank women’s desirability, scapegoat girls who rejected them, and trade casually racist banter (much to the chagrin of Kemp, who's Black, and Serge, who's Dominican).

Degenerates implicates the internet as a pipeline for paranoia and commodification. Those consequences are felt as the incels call a YouTube-posted song manipulative and cringe, Kemp distrusts the suicide crisis counseler he thinks is AI, and Target monetizes their feminine presentation online for layered reasons relating to gender performance and trauma.

Once Kemp and Serge’s voices exit the chat, the play takes an unexpected turn: On webcam, Target puts on sexy cow getup (impeccable costumes are by Kindall Houston Almond) to arouse Miller. In a miraculous set transition, Miller’s and Target’s separate bedrooms attach like two converging islands (Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s lived-in set design) as Miller comes to Target's apartment for a fateful meeting.

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.

We feel alienation the most, though, as an unseen voice blurs the lines between the seen and unseen characters. Intermittently, an omniscient narrator (Barresi) spells out the incels’ actions and emotions over the speakers (sound design is by Angela Baughman). The choice feels superfluous until it sinks in as a metaphor for how the conspiratorial Millers of the world see — and dehumanize — women as surveilling phantoms to exorcise from their heads. The voiceover pays off twofold; first, in a come-to-earth moment when Barresi appears on stage, and the audience must suddenly process her as a physical being. Later, a man’s voice takes over the mic and becomes subsumed by his image on a livestream (video and projection design are by S. Katy Tucker). Some people heal, but to metastasize is easier.

Degenerates summary

Set in 2026, Degenerates follows an online enclave of four incels convinced that the world has it out for unlovable men like them. Much of the play focuses on the nihilistic Miller and effeminate Target, who meet for the possibility of their first sexual experience and confront questions about their reasons for being, self-loathing, and loneliness.

What to expect at Degenerates

Acts 1 and 2 of Degenerates collectively run at 100 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission followed by a 45-minute Act 3. Don’t worry about the length — the drawn-out tension will enrapture you. Note, however, that the show contains extensive discussions of suicide and self-harm.

Degenerates provides a glossary, both on the lobby wall and in free zines, of incel lingo used in the play. Crucial jargon includes "cope" (an activity or belief used to hide from reality), "blackpill" (hopelessness), "foid" (a derogatory term for a woman), and "femboy" (a man presenting as feminine without identifying as a woman, which Target is figuring out).

Both sitting close and further back in the small theatre have its own pros and cons. I was seated close to the stage right half, near Target’s bedroom, which grants intimacy with White and his nuanced facial and physical performance, but being further back offers a comprehensive scope at the juxtapositioned action in Miller's and Target's rooms.

What audiences are saying about Degenerates

On the review aggregator Show-Score, Degenerates has an 81% audience approval score, based on 17 reviews, as of writing. Fittingly, there's also plenty of discussion about the show on Reddit and Bluesky, which are mentioned in the play, as well as the Mezzanine app.

• Show-Score user Varlotte praised Else Went's “brillant, empathetic ear for maladjusted weirdos' specific dialogue and pacing, with hyper-contemporary cadences.”
• Mezzanine user Javyen Chng praised the “great direction and insane chemistry," adding, "While the play is not without its flaws, the pros outweigh the cons.”
• Mezzanine user Derek Kahle said, “Went does a remarkable job of peeling back the loneliness of these characters without being condescending or cruel.”
• Reddit user u/Ok_Star_1157 said, "I was very invested, arguably too invested. I was absolutely terrified what these characters might do to themselves or to others. These characters scared me, but I felt deeply compassionate for them."
• Cultural critic and historian Isaac Butler posted on Bluesky, “Because of the subject matter of Degenerates at Playwrights and many of the swing-for-the-fences choice the play is making, I fear that Christopher Dylan White’s performance might get overshadowed. Simply put: they're one of the most exciting actors of their generation.”

Read more audience reviews of Degenerates on Show-Score.

Who should see Degenerates

• Fans of the Wents' Initiative at The Public Theater last year should check out their latest work.
• Playwrights Horizons's frequent visitors and general theatregoers would be drawn to the newest exciting, form-defying play the. It also shares some themes with the institution's recent production of Teeth.
• Degenerates is a study of the manosphere, a term for anti-women online communities and a common subject of the headlines as of late as its members' violence comes offline. Those following these stories would be interested by these play.
• Just as Initiative heavily incorporated Dungeons & Dragons into its story, Degenerates incorporates anime and may be interesting to the genre's fans.

Learn more about Degenerates off Broadway

Degenerates painstakingly visualizes how the internet can shrink and desensitize the self. Daring to go deep into psychosexual discomfort, the Wents' play illuminates the annihilative consequences of loneliness and self-loathing in a corrosive subculture.

Learn more and get Degenerates tickets on New York Theatre Guide. Degenerates is at Playwrights Horizons through October 18.

Photo credit: Degenerates off Broadway. (Photos by Jackie Abbott)