←Recommendations of Hiccups

This impressive piece digs through layers of underrepresented characters with humor and grace and engaging drama. What if I am my own obstacle? What if I create my own tension? With sensitivity and depth, writer Rosenblatt treads knee-deep through waters I've not really seen presented onstage. His writer's voice is both charmingly self-depricating and confident. A new Spalding Gray, exposing a vein. Glad to discover and learn from this writer.

This is a very funny one-person play with great roles! I found the information massively interesting - this is such a disorder of our time with so many people suffering, and the play actually helps us all understand how to deal with it because Ben performs the solution for us! Save us all a lot of therapy and tour the country with this play!

This solo play about OCD addresses life as a 'web of instrusive thoughts, rumination and anxiety' - and makes you, the [un]diagnosed, wonder about the same. You might freak out because you might recognize yourself in the parts played by the character-actor, you might laugh because you might recognize certain behaviors (hand-washing) or thoughts (hurting people, Antonio Banderas). Theatre should be always be a safe place to feel uncomfortable -- to recognize our common anxieties and traumas -- and this powerful play in the right theatre can make that possible - and make it ok to laugh.

Rosenblatt covers a lot of ground in this very human, nuanced play about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD takes many forms and there are varying examples throughout the play. There are poignant moments where the characters explain how they have needed to hurt someone so that they wouldn't hurt that person. Then there are the various way that people dismiss them, "Don't do that. Germs are good for you." Told with self-awareness and humor, audiences will find something to relate to in this play. Everyone has a hiccup in the brain at sometime in their life.

With the right design and staging, this would be an intensely theatrical and eye-opening piece about OCD and its effects. And what a powerhouse role for an actor! My favorite line comes near the end and lends a beautiful insight into the title/the disorder: “it’s just a hiccup in your brain, and you didn’t choose to have it, and millions of people around the world suffer from it and there’s no reason to feel any shame…”