Theater Review: Me, Myself, I

Identity, Reality Depend on What You See in the Mirror
By Lauren Yarger
Would you exist if someone decided you didn’t? Can reality be defined by love? These and other perplexing questions propel Edward Albee’s intriguing yet bizarre new play Me, Myself, & I running Off Broadway in its New York premiere at Playwright’s Horizons.

The questions start when OTTO (Zachary Booth) decides that his identical twin brother (Preston Sadleir) doesn’t exist any more and tries to convince his mother (Elizabeth Ashley), her boyfriend, Doctor (Brian Murray), and his brother’s girlfriend, Maureen (Natalia Payne) that he really is both of the identities in one person. And oh, OTTO also has decided that he will become Chinese.

Mother is confused enough already, having given both boys the same name with one slight difference: one is upper case OTTO, the evil one -- or is he?; the other one is small case otto. She hasn’t been able tell the twins apart since their birth when their father abandoned the family and left her on her own to raise them. She continually asks each boy, “Which one are you -- are you the one who loves me?”

Doctor filled the father’s shoes, or bed rather, 28 years ago, but sleeps fully clothed because the family keeps reminding him that Father might return at any time bringing panthers and emeralds (don’t ponder this too much) and reclaim his place in Mother’s bed and with the boys. Doctor brags that he can tell the twins apart because neither one loves him, but Maureen isn’t so lucky. She loves lower cased Otto, but ends up having sex with OTTO unaware that he’s not his brother.

It’s all just a little bizarre and confusing. The characters address the audience from time to time (Murray’s perfect timing with tongue-in-cheek delivery make his lines the most effective this way) with one of the twins leaning nonchalantly against the proscenium while watching his brother interact with the others. Set Designer Thomas Lynch ingeniously uses golden strips on the sides and across the top of stage to create the effect of a giant beveled mirror, creatively placing the observing brother outside the mirror looking in.

Director Emily Mann’s casting of two actors who look and act so incredibly alike (aided by Kenneth Posner’s lighting design and Jennifer von Mayrhauser’s costuming) will send you to your Playbill biographical listings several times to confirm that the men aren’t real-life identical twins. It’s intriguing and Ashley is fun as the bewildered mother with hair as frazzled as her emotions.

Why Mann didn’t urge an awkward Payne to do something besides stand with her arms outward in a pleading position every time she speaks is not clear, however, but then neither is a lot of the storyline. As OTTO keeps telling us, “Confusion is its own master. It brings itself with it.”

It sure does, especially in this play, but in then end, Albee makes confusion a lot more fun than you’d think it could be. Me, Myself & I runs through Oct. 31 at Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd St., NYC. Tickets are available by calling 212-279-4200.

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