OTHER: A Psychiatric Perspective
Publish Date: December 12, 2025
Author: Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman
Source: Shrink Speak substack
A Theatrical Portrayal of the Intersection of Identity and Mental Illness
OTHER is a one-man show penned and performed by Ari'el Stachel (known for his previous Tony Award-winning performance in the musical, The Band's Visit). Stachel's abundant artistry (he acts, sings, dances, and emotes while portraying 45 different characters) in the context of the play's kaleidoscopic narrative provides a unique entertainment that profoundly affects audiences.
Ari'el Stachel in Other. Photo Credit: Ogata
The Quest for the Self
What gives OTHER its revivifying impact, is the multiple levels at which the story’s narrative connects to the audience. The first and perhaps most fundamental theme of OTHER is the character's search for identity – for selfhood – a universal challenge that every human being faces in their journey from childhood to becoming a mature independent adult. It is the inexorable need to know "Who am I?" – an undertaking that varies greatly among people in degrees of difficulty.
In his literary masterpiece Far From the Tree, which examines the search for identity within the context of families challenged by exceptional diseases and disabilities, the author and journalist Andrew Solomon describes this often tortuous process with spell-binding eloquence. He explains that the notion of "procreation" is a misnomer: Parents do not replicate themselves, passing their identities on to their progeny in equal halves. Rather, they create altogether new beings who must seek and ultimately define their own sense of self.
The Tangled Web of Identity
The second theme of the play concerns a person's national, racial, religious, or ethnic identity – another layer in the construction of self. Depending upon the circumstances in which children find themselves, the process of self-discovery and creation of one’s identity varies greatly in its degree of difficulty. For example, a first-generation child of mixed-race immigrant parents might face a greater challenge than a white Anglo-Saxon protestant child born into an affluent family of blue blood ancestry. For Stachel, the heart of the struggle lay in his parents' marriage of Arabic-Jewish lineage to a middle class American suburbanite in a post-9/11 world.
The Geopolitical Catalyst
The third – and most searing – theme is the convergence of the character's maturation and identity formation with the historic geopolitical conflict between Jews and Arabs, Israel and Palestine, exacerbated first by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and, more recently, by the October 7th Hamas-led massacre. The emotional weight of these events is so powerful that the audience feels its impact on the character's development like a punch to the gut. Introducing this thematic force into the character's already fraught struggle for self-definition – set against a white-hot moral and historical conflict with no middle ground – elevates the narrative arc of the play to an entirely new level of emotional intensity.
Aggravation through Mental Illness
But then came the pièce de résistance – the coup de grâce—a moment that, as a psychiatrist, I recognized as a stroke of creative brilliance. The playwright wove the narrative threads together with a revelation that was cathartic, humanizing, and genuinely funny: the recognition that mental illness had infused the sociological and psychological gauntlet he was forced to navigate in his search for identity with much of the volatility and urgency he experienced.
Stachel conveys this by anthropomorphizing his lifelong struggle with anxiety, obsessive thinking, compulsive behaviors, and associated hyperhidrosis as a familiar presence called "Meredith." In the play's climax, Meredith is supplanted by a new figure – "Lexie." When the audience realizes that "Lexie" is Lexapro (escitalopram), the world's most widely prescribed SSRI antidepressant (three decades ago, the reference point would have been Prozac), a wave of insight passes through the room, illuminating Stachel's journey toward self-understanding. At the same moment, the plot twist releases the dramatic tension that had steadily mounted with each obstacle recounted in the narrative.
This revelation brilliantly reframed what had seemed an epic of existential anguish into a struggle against an untreated mental disorder superimposed on the universal existential search for identity. The clever device that affected the paradigm shift reminded the audience that, despite the stigma, mental illness is common and influences personal behavior but can be recognized, diagnosed, and treated.
While Stachel would invariably have had to confront the issues of identity and ideology regardless, the journey could have been substantially less arduous with proper therapeutic intervention. Stachel exhibited the resilience to persevere and prevail despite his undiagnosed condition, but too many others lack this capacity and suffer adverse consequences.
Altogether, Stachel's one-man show is an enjoyable, thought-provoking, and deeply affecting work. It entertains and provides the audience with a better understanding of mental illness and how it affects the struggle for identity – and offers hope to those facing a similar struggle.
Other ran through December 6, 2025 at Greenwich House Theater.