Do You Feel Anger? NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Provokes many emotions: amusement, sadness, terror, frustration...A great play seems buried within 'Do You Feel Anger?'s' excesses, but Bordelon...hasn't quite figured out how to sustain the humor until the big narrative shift. The audience gets restless, and the men overplay their outrageousness to dwindling effect. But Villarin and especially Hill make you believe in the play’s dark world—a funhouse mirror that's less distorted than one might like to believe."
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“It’s funny, it’s mordant, and it keeps you on edge with a loopiness that masks something somber and truly frightening. It can feel a little crazed, but there’s no mistaking its fierce, embattled sanity....Bordelon smartly keeps the play zinging along...The nightmarishness of the men’s blithe, brutal idiocy is buoyed up by the script’s genuinely weird comic brightness...Semi-feral and mischievous, a little warped and yet smart as hell and serious as a car-crash."
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"Nearly all of its characters consistently deliver lines designed to be funny in their shocking incongruity. But once you're onto the trick, which is almost immediately, 'Do You Feel Anger?' becomes a tiresome, repetitive exercise that squanders its important themes...The talented performers work hard for the intended laughs and sporadically deliver. But much like the male characters' preferred sexual predilection, this is a play that seems to pleasure itself without reciprocation.”
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“This comedy wrings laughter out of a dismal situation — one that, despite Nelson-Greenberg's heightened style, we recognize as our own...Through bold performances and specific design, director Margot Bordelon maintains the comical tone of Nelson-Greenberg's script without sacrificing any of its seriousness...’Do You Feel Anger?’ is a leading question for women in the workforce. Nelson-Greenberg knows they don't just feel anger, but rage.”
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"While we hear bits and pieces of what goes on during typical workdays, Nelson-Greenberg never shows us anyone dealing with a customer, omitting the foundation of the play's premise and what might explain the reasons for the extreme behavior that fills the 90-minute piece...This reviewer won't doubt that women in the workplace are frequently exposed to such behavior...but reality is elevated so much in this case that he found it difficult to feel, well, empathy."
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"The line between a successful absurdist farce and a fair-to-middling comedy sketch is perilously thin; Greenberg-Nelson delivers a solid premise, but, despite some scattered laughs, can't deliver on it...Clearly a talented writer, she intends to walk a tightrope of amusement and discomfort, but she stubs her toe and falls off. This is so despite a production, by Margot Bordelon, that has the hard, bright quality of a comic strip and the pacing of a revue sketch."
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“A cringe-making, absurdist comedy about a debt collection agency that hires an empathy coach to help them...takes a shocking turn in its final scenes that's as compelling as it is unearned...There is no subtlety or nuance in Nelson-Greenberg's absurdism so her desire to illuminate is dimmed before it can take flight. She may aspire to Ionesco or Pirandello, but ‘Do You Feel Anger?’ lands like an extended, and painful, Saturday Night Live skit."
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“While the playwright’s scenario suggests a sardonic variation on ‘The Office’, she composes its intermittently droll dialogue along mildly absurdist lines...This meaningful, initially humorous play ultimately does not provide much emotional or even satirical resonance, although women are likely to appreciate its depiction of sexist attitudes and subtleties...Good performances and effective design make the most of the play, which proves to be more thought provoking than actually satisfying.”
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"The main problem with ‘Anger’ as a comedy, in fact, is that it is just absurd—as opposed to provocative or trenchant or, frankly, all that funny...For what seems like the umpteenth time, we get a supposedly feminist vision that emphasizes victimhood over any real prospects for ‘empowerment' to dangle a favorite cliché. Do I feel anger about that? Irritation, perhaps—and hope that intelligent, engaged voices like Nelson-Greenberg’s can deliver more fleshed-out, nuanced work over time."
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"Starting out offbeat and humorous, it quickly devolves into repeating itself endlessly without enough new material to keep us amused or shocked. In the Vineyard Theatre production, director Margot Bordelon and the high powered cast of seven are fully in tune with the author's sensibility. Unfortunately, there are not enough surprises in this schematic play to keep us interested although the subject matter is eminently topical."
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"A profound and validating piece for the #MeToo era...The strength of the play really depends on the element of surprise when its farcical comedy turns into something more sinister, and eventually a bit magical...A brilliant play that expertly wrestles with complexity, with the daily battles women are fighting to be heard and respected, and with how women can help hold each other up in a world that keeps trying to tear us down.”
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"Explores not only the nature of ‘appropriate’ workplace behavior, parent/child relationships and one’s own sense of accomplishment...An apt, timely production...Bordelon keeps the pace lively and her adept cast, gamely inhabits characters deeply flawed people...Nelson-Greenberg has a flair for uninhibited one-liners which brusquely challenge misogyny, communication and deception...The play is richly absurdist and a successfully astringent, stinging fun-house mirror.”
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“The play which premiered at the Humana Festival last season isn't perfect, but its flaw — mainly in flailing its message a bit too relentlessly — is more than neutralized by the sheer audacity of the writing. Also notable is the excellence of the performers who are all extraordinarily adept at defining their seriously fractured characters...The play is fueled by a flow of dialogue so rapid that it rattles the brain as well as the ear.”
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“This author chose to explore none of the fun, little of the danger, and all of the drab and dull. So much so that I DID feel anger...This play is a one trick pony that runs out of steam before it gets started...The actors all acquit themselves admirably...But I do feel anger. There is no story...To stretch it out into a full length play was an ambitious undertaking. But much more meat is needed on those bones in order to sustain the journey...Even the conclusion left us all baffled.”
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"At first, some of this is cute and chuckle-worthy but it quickly wears off. You must then endure words and actions that grow increasingly surrealistic...Fortunately, an impressively able company, under Margot Bordelon's upbeat direction, keeps the manic atmosphere bristling. Important as the messages are about sexual harassment and the need for empathy, they're wrapped in such outrageously cartoonish behavior that some are likely to answer the title question, 'Yes.'"
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"This outrageously disturbing 'comedy' shows just how masculinity is now thought of as completely toxic and inconceivable, but also how women sell out themselves and others in order to accomplish their own goals...Hill’s performance and character seems the most well written...Nelson-Greenberg's absurdist writing will be admired by many. Her ridiculously exaggerated situations would be hilarious if they didn’t show humanity at such a horrible point."
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“Nelson-Greenberg’s absurdist comedy...Each employee gets at least one scenery-chewing moment. Cumulatively it’s a bit like a string of very funny SNL sketches. The actors really give it their all...The direction is smooth. If there is a message...It is something about the sorry state of women office workers. Some of the play’s moments are so funny that it might be tempting to overlook the flaws that, for me, ultimately led to disappointment.”
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“Nelson-Greenberg’s provocative new play...Mercurial subversion of our expectations lies at the core of Nelson-Greenberg’s anarchic humor, as well as Bordelon’s loopy direction of her talented cast...Chukwu, Keller and Long carry the office-jerk thing to absurd levels. It’s an act that could wear thin fast but doesn’t thanks to their light helium-induced charm...Nelson-Greenberg makes her NY debut with this wild comedy. Hers is an offbeat, novel, wonderful voice.”
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"A razor-sharp, whip-smart satire of contemporary workplace culture...The blissful antithesis of complacent theatre-making in which you never quite know what is going to happen next. Equal parts hilarious and horrifying, Ms. Nelson-Greenberg, director Margot Bordelon, and their cast serve up a highly digestible, surrealist critique of mores around empathy consciousness, sexual harassment, hyper-masculinity, and female agency...This play could not be more timely."
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“The biting send-up of workplace dynamics, gender disparity, and toxic masculinity delivers the laughs then packs a punch, with a powerful ending that brings home the importance of empathy and compassionate listening...A show that is as meaningful as it is outrageous. It will make you laugh and shake your head, while promulgating a timely message that rings loud and clear: #TimesUp.”
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"I loved that Greenberg and Director Margot Bordelon approached the difficulty of accepting that there are men who would NEVER see a woman as equal or due of civility. They represent our truth...As a female viewer, I found my discomfort and anger grow because such dynamics are everywhere, especially between oppressors and the oppressed."
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“A fitful comedy with an ingenious premise...The male actors here offer an entertaining gallery of satiric portraits. But the variations on their characters’ willful stupidity are stretched awfully thin...Bordelon’s staging lacks the sustained thrum of anxiety required to justify the play’s climactic eruption into violence...For ‘Anger’ aspires to more than caricatures of dangerously devolved masculinity.”
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