‘Degenerates’ Journeys Into the Dark Heart of the Manosphere

An idle mind is not the devil’s only playground — lonely hearts can be just as fertile territory for dark forces. That’s certainly a key takeaway from the “incel” phenomenon, the term used for a community of socially, romantically, and often economically isolated young men — the word is an abbreviation for “involuntarily celibate” — whose propensity for raging misogyny has found fuel in the bleakest corners of social and alternative media.Last year saw the New York premiere of “Angry Alan,” Penelope Skinner’s witty, haunting account of a divorced father, recently sacked from a well-paid job, who gets sucked into the “manosphere,” as these places are sometimes collectively identified. Now another playwright, Else Went, who made a splash last fall with “Initiative,” a five-hour study of teenagers through their high-school years, is dipping her toe into the muck. Ms. Went’s new play, “Degenerates,” which has opened off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, is shorter than her previous work, clocking in at about two hours and 45 minutes, including an intermission, and its characters tend to be older, but not by much. One is about to turn 19 and the eldest is in his early 30s — at the younger end of the millennial generation, though that doesn’t stop another guy from dismissing him at one point as a “boomer.” The play opens with a call to a suicide hotline, a literal cry in the dark, piercing in its pathos. Lights then come up on two rooms, one belonging to a 28-year-old, Miller, the other to the teenager, who calls himself Target. They’re chatting virtually with the old dude, whom we never actually see in person, and a 21-year-old who will figure more prominently in the play as it progresses.Scenic designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams has provided Miller with a spartan bedroom, a single poster plastered next to a microwave oven, whereas Target lives in a studio apartment strewn with Christmas lights and anime and kanga figures, including stuffed animals. Miller is tightly wound, foul-mouthed, and acerbic, name-checking Charlie Kirk and Joe Rogan in one of his sprawling anti-establishment screeds.Target is much softer in both appearance and demeanor. We’ll learn that he was bullied in high school, that he has been using his delicate good looks online to make money — quite a bit of it, apparently — and that, prodded by a fan, he is considering changing his gender. He has never quite felt he cut it as a man, he confides to Miller, who is by turns titillated and disgusted.You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out which of these two will be revealed as the monster at the end of this play. Like a number of contemporary playwrights, Ms. Went, who identifies as transgender, paints the characters — or character, in this case — whose politics she finds reprehensible with less nuance than the others. Miller might have fit well into an epic theater piece or a flat-out farce, but here he seems like a cartoon villain posed against sympathetic humans. That’s a shame, because Ms. Went is an empathetic and emotionally astute writer, and she’s also a gifted satirist, capturing the frustrations and yearnings of young digital addicts in their own jargon. Directed by Emma Rosa Went, the playwright’s wife, the actors are all funny and engaging. Zachary Desmond manages to at least make us pity Miller at times, like when he’s trying to assure his mom (whom we don’t see) that he’s okay, right before she leaves chicken nuggets outside his bedroom door. Christopher Dylan White’s Target is tender and witty, and Tyler Nowell Felix is cuddly and poignant as another lost soul in their chat group.Olivia Rose Barresi plays a woman who only pops up briefly, but “Degenerates” also calls on her to read select stage directions, to winningly droll effect. I’m looking forward to seeing more work by this playwright, though I hope she’ll learn to either be more candidly ideological or to spread her generosity of spirit a little more evenly.

‘Degenerates’ Journeys Into the Dark Heart of the Manosphere

‘Degenerates’ Journeys Into the Dark Heart of the Manosphere

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