Review: In Pre-Existing Condition, a Woman Contends with the Aftermath of Domestic Violence

Marin Ireland’s Pre-Existing Condition begins on a discouraging note. “I mean if you have 10 grand to spend on litigation, fine, that’s one way,” an attorney tells a woman considering legal action against a former romantic partner who hit her, “but I always tell people, you have to be ready for a fight. Which, just from our short time with each other, I can already tell that you’re not.” That the woman, named in the script only with the letter “A,” did not immediately file a police report after the incident further diminishes her chances of prevailing in court, so the lawyer tells her. It’s sound legal advice, unfortunately.

Pre-Existing Condition, which is now playing a return engagement at Greenwich House, gives audiences an honest and sobering look at one woman’s experience treading water in the wake of domestic violence. A (Lupita Nyong’o) feels angry, sad, and unprepared to forgive—especially when her attacker’s new girlfriend (Sarah Steele, whose visible pregnancy raises the stakes) is sent to pressure her into meeting with him. She attends support group meetings facilitated by a pair of kindly but firm women (Steele and Dael Orlandersmith). And she attempts to move on with her romantic life by dating a new guy (Greg Keller).

She cannot help but blame herself, and a phone call with her mother (also Keller, hilariously) suggests why. Mom blames a family member for staying with an abusive partner, and has essentially cut her off because of that. A also hit her attacker first, muddying the waters of responsibility and dooming any potential legal battle. She also says that, despite everything that happened, she still loves him, an inconvenient emotional truth that is sure to resonate with many of the one in three women in the audience who have experienced domestic violence.

Ireland, one of the great actors of this era, was inspired by her own experience with fellow actor and former partner Scott Shepherd to make this professional playwriting debut. Unfortunately, Pre-Existing Condition has a vagueness about it that made it hard for me (admittedly, a gay man with limited experience of domestic violence) to connect with. We never learn about where A lives, what she does for work, or how she met her ex-partner. Like Suzie Miller and her play Prima Facie, Ireland relies on those one in three women to bring the emotional specifics with them to the theater. A feels less like a real person than a blank space in a template.

Some of this is by design. In the coming months, a succession of great actors will step into the role of A, a character who is meant to be played by women of all different ages and races. Ireland is intentionally sending the message that this could happen to any woman, but that’s hard to internalize when one struggles to believe it happened to this woman onstage before us.

Perhaps the play will come alive as performed by Susannah Flood or Edie Falco, but Nyong’o’s performance strikes a false note throughout, with forced physical gestures and stilted line readings. I was always aware she was acting.

Under the direction of Maria Dizzia, the supporting cast members (who will stay with the show throughout the run) fare better. Steele is especially convincing as several other women offering shades of sympathy and skepticism when confronted with A’s story. Gender solidarity has never been a given.

Cate McCrea’s set tethers us to the depressingly carpeted community center room in which A attends her meetings. A single framed inspirational poster invites us to “consider the alternatives,” while a never-activated floor lamp cowers behind a stack of metal chairs. Isabella Byrd’s lighting subtly directs our vision in this 80-minute play with no scene breaks, giving us a sense of the conflicting voices A hears as she contends with this personal tragedy.

I regretted even more not seeing Pre-Existing Condition during its 2024 world premiere run upstairs at the Connelly. I suspect that in that intimate space, with the actors on our same level or slightly lower, the scenes in which Steele and Orlandersmith turn to the audience like we are participants in the support group landed more convincingly. Up on the tall stage of Greenwich House, however, it can only feel stagey and awkward.

It’s hard to know if that strangeness is baked into Ireland’s script, which abandons a promising and little-known story for something more generic. The title was inspired by the practice of denying women care based on the “pre-existing condition” of being an abuse victim, which until the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, was still something that happened in the United States. That’s a story to make the blood boil. Unfortunately, the temperature of Pre-Existing Condition never rises above a simmer.