[11/12/2024] Some love stories are sad, some love stories are trippy. Some love stories deliver a poignant, evocative illustration of neurodivergence within a story of mid-life crisis navigating racism and homophobia. Sickles has managed to do all of this in SEASIDE TRAGEDIES. Of the many things to love about this script, Scott is a writer who has proven he knows the rules of playwriting intimately, and earns the reader's implicit trust to dive deeper with him as he delightfully breaks them.

Riveting and incantory, this play takes us deep into one man's experience living with ADHD, long Covid, and bigotry. His experience is vividly depicted, as are the characters who surround him in both his real and hallucinatory worlds. So much of this play left me breathless and in awe of its bracing theatricality.

I want to live a lifetime in the world of Tishk and Brady, even though Scott Sickles successfully pulled off the realism of this kind of romance, meaning often devastating and terrifying -- it would be worth it if it means I get to see every inch of their layered life together. The violence is gripping but the love is so, so real. I can't wait to see more of this play as well as other full-length works by Scott. Seaside Tragedies made a follower out of me!