←Recommendations of Seaside Tragedies

[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!

Both raw and literate, this devastating piece offers searing, personal insight into neurodivergent thinking (when the brain flat out works against the person trying to use it) piled on top of systemic prejudice, trauma, complications of Covid, loss and longing. The anticipated staging is ambitious, imaginative and gripping. Note: this play has graphic (though integral) realistic intimacy that may not be everyone, but then again maybe it should be, because it is, above all, triumphantly, honest. And "I won't survive you twice" is a line I'll never forget.

As a Pisces with ADHD who loves coffee, I'm perhaps wired at a base level to adore this play. Tishk's "brain faffing" (real term, look it up) is remarkably written. I cannot overstate how excellently Sickles translates ADHD brain to the stage. He NAILS it. The thought cycles, the imagined scenarios and blurring of memories, the anxiety. I'm so excited to see the trajectory of this play, because it already feels timeless, looking forward, while back at the past at the same time, struggling to find peace in a terrifying now. Brilliantly structured, layered, and heart-wrenching. The Sea, indeed.

Yet again Sickles looks forward with his work. Although the illness is not explicitly named, the protagonist of the play is suffering from the long-term effects of a condition that we cannot help but associate with Covid. The play fully explores a survivor's attempt to re-negotiate his place in the world, an ordeal so many of us will be undergoing. There is an absolute tour-de-force in the center of this play that captures the humor, anxiety, and sheer pathos of a character's feelings in the midst of less-than-satisfying sex. A thoroughly compelling piece, and I look forward to future drafts.

There’s something about a seaside setting that invites a pervasive air of unrest and melancholy, and in this cinematically structured piece from Scott Sickles, the setting merges beautifully with his somewhat uneasy (this time) romanticism; the effect (at least in this early draft) is akin to being in a perpetually dream-like state, mesmerized by the waves rolling in and out. One of Sickles’ more introspective works, he takes great risks with time and place, shifting perspectives incessantly and relentlessly; I can’t wait to see how he develops this, as it is already pretty heady stuff.