Beside Myself
All of Me meets Being John Malkovich — with a heart! In early 2024, Psychology Today published an article entitled, “New Research Finds Narcissism is Associated with Happiness.” Well, sure. When insecurity is constitutionally impossible, when everything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault, when your own satisfaction is the only thing in the whole wide world that matters to you (and, by rights, to the rest of the world), you’ve got a better shot at bliss than the poor schleps out there who look within and tremble. And heaven help anyone who gets in your way — because you sure as heck won’t.
Gemma — the woman at the center of Paul Slade Smith’s North Coast Rep-commissioned new play — is at the opposite end of the spectrum. She’s completely unhappy, because she’s constantly and acutely aware of everyone else’s suffering. She feels their pain — and their panic, and their anxiety, and their fear — so acutely that she can barely leave her apartment. She tried to turn her curse into a gift by becoming a therapist, but found that “people aren’t looking for a therapist who looks like she needs a therapist,” whose very cause of anxiety is “being a therapist” and so having to deal with her patients’ anxiety.
Enter Dr. Thatcher and her relentlessly cheerful assistant, and their promise to take all that away and give Gemma her life back — Poof! — via a procedure that is “technically brain surgery, but minimally invasive.” It’s not reversible, and not exactly authorized, but then, nobody has ever wanted a reversal, and “the FDA is a lot more lax than they used to be.” (Oh ho ho!) The only possible hiccup: you might, on occasion, hear from yourself — your old self. Maybe it means Dr. Thatcher missed a bit while she was fishing around in your skull. Maybe it means something else. In any case, just come on back in and Doc will take care of it.
Depending on how it’s handled, a premise like this could produce a thinky drama, a nightmarish horror, or a wacky comedy. Playwright Slade opts for door number three (though it’s impossible to completely escape the pathos when your desperate “other you” begs you not to call the doctor and have it put down). Sometimes, he goes broad: there’s an early, extended gag that arises from going through the wrong door, a very good bit involving a model brain. Sometimes, he gets sitcommy, there’s an encounter between a grumpy super and a lovesick tenant who happens to be recording their exchange that’s plenty amusing, even if it has little to do with philosophical questions arising from self-improvement surgery. And sometimes, he gets sharp: “I used to doubt myself,” notes one satisfied customer, “but I’m all better now.” But the best, funniest stuff comes from star Erin Noel Grennan talking to herself, shifting ever so slightly between personas as she goes. “Wasn’t you being gone the whole idea?” “No, you being better.” “I’d be better if you were gone!”
It's not a perfect job; there are places where its workings feel as slippery as Dr. Thatcher’s sales pitch. I’m not sure that a sweet guy who’s sweet on the nervous girl would be totally thrilled when she turns into a sexually frank boss babe. And while I admired the sheer physicality and chaos of the climatic confrontation, I couldn’t help but long for something a little more cerebral, given all the self-talk that preceded it. Still, it’s fun, funny, and impressively performed — and a kick for anyone who’s ever caught themselves wishing they’d been a natural-born narcissist.