Yen (MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre) by Anna Jordan

The last time I saw theater this shockingly fantastic was a couple of years ago with The New Group’s “Mercury Fur”. 

Yen is a dystopian vision, raw and horrifying but bursting with emotion and absolutely amazing acting, set to a soundtrack that screams and jars the nerves.

As two teenage brothers living alone in a squalid flat while their alcoholic mother lives with her boyfriend, 16 year old Hench (a raw and smoldering Lucas Hedges) and 14 year old and not-quite-right Bobbie (an explosive and extraordinary Justice Smith) waste their days watching porn, listening to their locked up dog bark and stealing the minimum required to survive. 

Into this nihilistic nightmare comes Jenny (a lovely and grounding Stefania LaVie Owen) a new neighbor who wants to rescue the dog, Taliban, from his locked room existence.  Jenny’s (whose childhood nickname of Yen, as in to yearn, was given to her by her beloved dead father) warmth begins to cut through the torpor in which the brothers exist and their odd little threesome forms a family for them all.

 Ari Graynor is brilliant as the self-absorbed, self-pitying and loathsome mother, Maggie.  She pops in on the boys looking for money and love and worrying, not at all, that they are not in school and have little to eat or wear. 

Jenny’s influence lets the brothers see a life outside of their nihilistic existence but when Hench decides to run away with Jenny all of the illusions come crashing down.  The horror that ensues and its aftermath seem to prove that when people are this broken, yearning for a different and better life is futile.