Pre-Existing Condition review – Lupita Nyong’o is phenomenal in domestic abuse drama

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Paradoxically, the more stars step into the lead role in Pre-Existing Condition, the more the brilliance of Marin Ireland’s domestic abuse play takes center stage. Not that it ever suffered from a lack of acting talent – when it premiered in 2024, at New York’s tiny Connelly Theater Upstairs, it counted Tatiana Maslany, Edie Falco and Deirdre O’Connell among the actors who played its central character in quick succession, for only a few weeks each. And this return engagement, at the larger Greenwich House Theater across town, kicks off with Lupita Nyong’o, before making way for Phillipa Soo, Susannah Flood, Hari Nef, Falco again and Whitney White.

It’s a straightforward conceit, perfectly calibrated for a 75-minute run time. A woman (whom the script refers to as A, currently played by Nyong’o) is dealing with the aftermath of a breakup triggered by her partner hitting her. When we meet her, someone (perhaps a lawyer, or a therapist) is laying out the reality of her situation: even with the deep pockets required to go to court, it’s been seven months since the incident, it happened across state lines and she never called the police. “You have to be ready for a fight,” she tells A. “Which, just from our short time with each other, I can already tell that you’re not.”

From there, people appear in A’s life as if through a haze. Three performers (Greg Keller, Dael Orlandersmith and Sarah Steele, all perfect) play a series of friends, relatives and social workers. Some are empathetic group counselors, trained to be helpful. Others, like one of the former couple’s mutual friends, wishes A would just move on.

Characters might define who they are midway through a scene. But as played by the rotating trio, and with even well-meaning acquaintances capable of uttering something unwittingly devastating, anyone who walks into A’s life registers as a stranger. Director Maria Dizzia blurs transitions by having characters linger as Isabella Byrd’s lighting shifts, and the next scene begins before we’ve realized the current one has ended. (Cate McCrea’s set and Enver Chakartash’s costumes are aptly nondescript.)

The result is an atmosphere of confusion, matching A’s destabilized self. Ireland’s script places her on a gently upward trajectory, but is clear about the reality that healing is hardly linear. She’s based it on her own experience with domestic violence: her ex, the actor Scott Shepherd, struck Ireland while they were rehearsing a play in London in 2012.

There’s anger and vengefulness and displaced blame, as well as sharp, well-researched and clearly lived observations of the impossible situations into which women are placed. The title refers to how certain US states, as late as 2010, classified domestic violence as a way for insurance companies to deny victims coverage. A counselor at one point notes that children are the main reason women do, and don’t, leave violent situations – a chilling “damned if you do” reality.

But it’s the levity and cautious optimism of the piece that best comes across. Flowing through the all-around excellent work is a real sense of care, of a team of women coming together to share a wave of communal honesty.

That’s in part because Ireland and Dizzia are best known as actors, which instinctively makes our lizard brains wonder why they’ve stepped out of the box into which we’ve put them. And the wide range in lead casting (across age, race, artistic milieu), which Ireland’s script encourages to explore “being a shared experience”, is both practically ingenious and thematically profound.

Though both are excellent, Nyong’o could not be further from Falco, whom I saw in the role two years ago – in terms of acting, temperament, appearance and familiarity. That a critic could be so stunned by different actors succeeding in the same role should typically be grounds for dismissal, but there’s a humbling quality to Ireland’s play, as beautifully directed by Dizzia, that both highlights and dismantles differences – of what’s in the text and beyond, and of who’s in the room on any given night, onstage or off, and how they might react.

Nyong’o’s inherent youthfulness and regality renders her somewhat of an entitled millennial, rocked by the first bad thing to ever happen to her. It’s leagues away from Falco’s humiliation at being put through this at a later stage in life. Both, the script demands and Ireland knows, must confront that shame.

During A’s too-soon attempts at dating, Nyong’o goes for a flirty, almost hypersexual approach, and I tried to remember how Falco played the scenes. I wondered how Nef or White would take to them. How would – does – anyone? Ireland’s play, while it can’t be a roadmap, is a tightly designed, gorgeously felt blueprint.