Do You Feel Anger? NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (165)
See it if Theatre of the Absurd, scarily not so absurd. Strongly committed cast, incl. Justin Long,
Don't see it if Afraid to release inner demons,
See it if Wacko absurdist dark comedy. At the same time, deadly serious. Audience & protagonist are kept off-guard. Brilliant writing/acting/staging.
Don't see it if Oppressive power dynamics in an insane workplace will be triggering to you. You don’t enjoy crazy disturbing satire.
See it if You want an absurdist take on "male privilege" and can see past that absurdity (which is entertaining) and uncover the heart of the play
Don't see it if You don't like absurd comedy or will only focus on that, while missing what the show is trying to say. You will leave disappointed Read more
See it if outrageous, unsettling, saddening. Good thing it’s a punch drunk comedy. You want to see a consistent, truly effective grotesque.
Don't see it if you aren’t inclined to feel anger, didn’t like The Thanksgiving Play, prefer characters/fleshed personalities to the sequence of impacts. Read more
See it if you like unusual plays with much laughter at first that turns more serious; you enjoy quirky plays
Don't see it if you need to know what's going on all the time; you don't want to see a play involving self-centered men who don't understand empathy
See it if You're interested in the dynamics of how even well-intentioned & educated women often give in to men. Clever&absurd, but touching in the end
Don't see it if You don't like frenetic and over the top depictions, or aren't interested in MeToo issues. But you'll be missing out -this is powerful stuff
See it if you enjoy PARTICULARLY dark, absurdist comedy.
Don't see it if you often feel you are being talked down to. Read more
See it if you want to spend an hour laughing and contemplating the fragility of men's identities.
Don't see it if Don't like silliness that hides a more serious dialogue.
Critic Reviews (22)
"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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"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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