Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Modern masculinity under candid scrutiny in Else Went’s DEGENERATES and Max Wolf Friedrich’s THE HOLES

• By drediman
• October 12, 2026
• No Comments

This past week, I came across a pair of new Off-Broadway plays that took it upon themselves to candidly scrutinize modern masculinity in, for the most part, shades of compellingly indeterminate grey. Although neither play is perfect, I’m still thinking about them days after taking them in. Here are my thoughts.

DEGENERATES
Playwrights Horizons
Through November 1

Self identifying as “incels” (short for involuntary celibate), the three men at the core of Else Went’s Degenerates (RECOMMENDED) at Playwrights Horizons are lonely, dejected, and full of rage. Physically isolated in their own rooms, they communicate with each other via internet group chat, angrily denouncing the unfair world that has cast them aside and wallowing in their self-pity. Although much of their conversations and beliefs/opinions are, more often than not, outright objectionable, the production does a skillful job of mining enough humanity for us to empathize with them, mainly because the writing and director Emma Rosa Went take on the characters and their woes with strict seriousness, coming to them at face value with minimal judgment (the play’s scant humor largely arises from circumstantial awkwardness). Despite belonging to the same social group, these characters, however, are not purely aligned in their views — they’ve arrived at said identification via different paths (no spoilers here), which gives the playwright the leverage to create drama as they painfully work through their respective issues in order to sustainably exist in society. Their discussions and eventual physical encounters with each other reveal the knotted layers that form each of their personas, the power dynamics between them, and the fluidity of gender and sexuality beneath societal categorization. Like the Wents’ epic group coming-of-age saga Initiative at The Public, the equally ambitious Degenerates morphs into increasingly standard fare the further it unfolds, tying up its messy strands with surprising tidiness. The first two acts are a slow burn, gradually building in intensity into a crescendo of smashing, thought-provoking theater driven by shame and shamelessness. Sadly, the play’s last act falls into sentimentality and the trap of neatly prescriptive causal logic. That being said, also like that previous effort, staging, text, and performance (all pitch perfect) are tightly intertwined, resulting in an overall theatrical experience blooms compellingly as devised group effort.

THE HOLES
Wild Project
Through November 15

The Holes (RECOMMENDED) down at the Wild Project is — for better or worse — a far more slippery beast, however. The work is Max Wolf Friedrich’s follow-up to Job, a dramatic two-hander that somehow ultimately found its way to Broadway a few seasons ago. Taking place entirely in a dive bar in Kingston, NY, Friedrich’s latest opens with the establishment — which houses a mysterious backroom where straight men are, well, serviced through a gloryhole — winding its way to extinction. Enter an entrepreneurial clientele from the city, whose near religious experience there instigates an aggressive rebranding of the Hudson Valley bar as an exclusive, members-only men’s wellness club. On the surface, the play comes across as an amusing indictment of the championing of men’s wellness and men’s only spaces as a retaliation to the onslaught of woke perspectives. More ambitiously, however, The Holes overtly speculates the therapeutic benefits of losing oneself in sexual subversive activities — historically primarily in the purview of gay culture — for heteronormative men. In addition to taking on the notion of modern American masculinity, the piece is also a commentary on gentrification as communities continue to grapple with the psychological and socio-economic aftermath of the global pandemic. With its obvious shades of Harold Pinter and David Lynch, much of the play’s pleasures arise from its sheer bizarreness (although, admittedly, some may leave the theater scratching their heads over either Friedrich’s sensationalistic premise or some of the piece’s intentional vagueness). In my book, the piece successfully walks the fine line between menace and satire, thanks largely to director Michael Herwitz’s tone-perfect reading of the play, as well as the subtly insidious bar set and some unsettling sound/lighting design work. The work focuses on a quartet of finely-etched characters, which — like Degenerates — are animated by splendid, carefully-honed performances from a deluxe cast (including the likes of fabulous downtown stalwart Tina Benko as the brashly truth-saying local lush, as well as playwright on-the-rise Bubba Weiler as the bar’s uncertain proprietor, who has inherited the bar from his terminally sick father).