The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Other at Greenwich House Theater
By Ross
When Ari’el Stachel won his Tony Award for The Band’s Visit, a show that I loved with all my heart (including his swoon-worthy performance), he stood on that Broadway stage most radiant and grateful. What we didn’t know, and what Other, his captivating one-man show, reveals is that behind that triumphant smile lived a man caught in a wild storm of anxiety, self-doubt, and a lifetime of feeling the shame of the “other.” Written and magnificently performed by Stachel and directed with grace and precision by Tony Taccone (Public’s The Harder They Come), Other never lets up and never lets us down. It’s a funny, feverish, and deeply moving excavation of identity and shame, told by an engaging artist trying his best to learn a way to own every single fractured part of himself, and find peace.
Unwinding at full velocity with the Tony win, the applause, the disbelief, followed quickly by a full-blown panic attack and a bathroom breakdown, Stachel recreates those moments with both the confidence of a performer and the trembling recall of a man whose interior world was unraveling. He embodies a myriad of personas, taking his own arm and leading him into celebration, before the show quickly resets and rewinds. He guides us on his journey via a fast-talking confessional that ricochets through childhood, adolescence, and career, propelled by the controlling voice of “Meredith,” his OCD personified as the coldly perfect antagonist from The Parent Trap. (In one of those odd coincidences that made me laugh in recognition, I once shared an apartment with the actress who played her, making Stachel’s choice even more striking and darkly funny.) His “Meredith” forever stands firm, arms crossed, and demanding, becoming both his fierce tormentor and unwanted companion. Her relentless whisper of doubt and vindictiveness haunts every triumph and personal interaction, from the age of six to now, but the complexities of this piece don’t stop there.
What’s most remarkable about Other is how it manages to be as entertaining as it is raw. Stachel is a magnetic storyteller, leaping between scenes, accents, and eras with the agility of a stand-up comic and the emotional acuity of a confessional poet. He sweats, literally and metaphorically, through engrossing stories of his youth, growing up with a Yemenite Jewish father whom he tries to hide from friends who horrifically throw the weaponized word “Arab” at him as soon as they see his smiling father. He admits to all the fabrications he has told, to pretending to be of a different racial identity, and even claiming that his father was dead, all in the desperate pursuit of acceptance from those around him. It’s uncomfortable and honest, yet also extremely liberating to behold.
The production at the Greenwhich House Theater has the intimacy of a late-night confession and the theatricality of a high-wire act. Yet director Taccone wisely keeps the staging simple, giving Stachel only a chair, a projection, and a shifting light to let him deliver his restless physicality and vocal dexterity to the room. Scenic designer Afsoon Pajoufar (PH’s Practice) and lighting designer Alexander V. Nichols (Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking) subtly shape the psychological terrain, while Madeleine Oldham’s sound design gives crafted texture to the show’s interior chaos and discomfort.
What makes Other special is its refusal to sand down the contradictions and tensions. Stachel doesn’t tidy up his story into a moral code of clever constructions. He allows it to pulse within a barrage of discomfort, sweat, and laughter. His anxiety, nicknamed and narrated, becomes a strange kind of co-star, a manifestation of how relentless the pursuit of identity can be when you’ve spent your life shape-shifting to survive.
The Band’s Visit, ironically, was about the smooth, silky sound of connection between strangers. But Other is about the louder, messier symphony of engaging with oneself through honesty, vulnerability, and fear. It’s a story of self-confrontation told with humor, shame, and ultimately, compassion. We watch Stachel reclaim his voice, and his soul, which feels like witnessing someone breathe freely for the first time. Other stands firm for this clarity of heart and craft. It’s brave without being self-pitying, self-aware without being self-conscious. Stachel shows us that belonging isn’t a destination like Petah Tikva or even Bet Hatikvah (with a B), it is a practice of self-acceptance, one that demands we make peace with all our other selves, including the part that always seems to demand on having it her way, or die.
