After Ari’el Stachel won a Tony Award for his charming and hilarious Broadway debut in the role of a sexy Egyptian trumpet player in “The Band’s Visit,” he was made so anxious by all the congratulations that he kept on rushing to the bathroom for paper towels to wipe the sweat pouring down his face.  He dramatizes the experience in the first scene of his solo autobiographical show, “Other,” opening tonight at Greenwich House Theater. His performance is impressive, brave and deeply unsettling. 

Impressive because of Stachel’s varied and spot-on impersonations of the many people who have been in his life, starting in that first scene with a Korean-American bro, an old Jewish couple, a drunk white woman, a gay publicist and others who congratulate him after the Tonys.

 Brave because he tells us upfront that his anxiety at the Tonys was no one-time jitters; a psychiatrist first diagnosed him with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder when Stachel was five years old, and prodigious sweating is a regular symptom of his chronic anxiety. In “Other,” he openly chronicles his struggles with his mental health. 

Unsettling  because his condition manifests itself before our eyes: He sweats noticeably throughout his 90-minute performance. His therapist had told him to give a name to the voice in his head that feeds his anxiety, and so he started calling it Meredith (after the evil stepmom in the movie “The Parent Trap”) and Meredith is a prominent character in the play.

I watched him portray Meredith, and in other ways relive his anxiety, while the sweat dripped from his face, and I wondered: How much support is he getting?  Is this show healing for him, or could it be damaging to make himself so vulnerable, nightly performing his issues for public consumption? Is it even appropriate for me to share my reaction like this: What right do I have to go beyond my job of assessing the production to expressing concern about his well-being?  Am I overreacting out of squeamishness, or some kind of ignorance or prejudice?  The questions I asked myself are what made the play unsettling to me.

The overwhelming emphasis in the play, reportedly on the recommendation of director Tony Taccone, is on Stachel’s anxiety. “Other” could have been focused more on his identity as both an Arab- and a Jewish-American. That’s the story that the title more clearly encapsulates, and it’s a rich subject that results in some fascinating scenes in the play.   

He dramatizes how his father, an Israeli from Yemen who was working as a taxi driver, met his mother, an American-born Ashkenazi Jew from New York who was studying to be a doctor,  while they were both Israeli folk dancing in San Francisco. They married, had two children, and soon divorced. 

 “They thought being Jewish was enough to build a life together, but as it turns out  Ashkenazi Americans and Yemenite Israelis are different species,” Shahel observes.

Ari was ten years old when 9/11 happened; the suspects were the first brown faces he had ever seen on television, and they looked like his father.  

“Aba,” Ari said to his father, “are we Arab?”

“No, we Jews.”

But his classmates thought otherwise, and taunted him so much that he changed schools and pretended to be a white American in his new school. This worked for a while, until a friend met his father. Then Ari changed schools again, and pretended to be Black. He didn’t attend his high school graduation so that the presence of his father wouldn’t blow his cover again. If the lengths to which he goes to deny his background are disturbing, the scenes he performs of his attempts to belong — to fit in somewhere with disparate friend groups and families — are also humorous and touching. 

 Eventually, he comes to accept his identity, although it’s not simple, nor easy. He befriends a fellow Middle Eastern actor, Aziz, whom he met in the waiting room of an audition for the character in a show on CBS of “Terrorist number 2.” They help found a group called MENASA, Middle Eastern, North African, South Asian Actors. There are many arguments within the group, especially after he, a Jew, was cast as an Egyptian in “The Band’s Visit.”

He starts to think he can use his mixed identity to serve as a bridge between communities that are at odds. The attempt  collapses after the Hamas massacre of Israeli Jews on October 7, 2023. 

“I don’t even understand these divisions,” he says at one point. “We come from the same land. Eat the same foods. We sing the same melodies. How can I pick a side when all sides are inside of me?”

It’s not what anybody wants to hear, judging from the barrage of nasty comments projected on stage that he received from all sides on social media.  But I’m glad he gets a stage on which to say it.

Other
Greenwich House Theater through December 6
Running time: 90 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $67 – $121
Written and performed by Ari’el Stachel
Directed by Tony Taccone
Scenic design by Afsoon Pajoufar; lighting & projections design by Alexander V. Nichols; and sound design by Madeleine Oldham.