Adam Strauss shares his quest for magic mushrooms to cure his OCD in one-man show (photo by Dixie Sheridan)
Cherry Lane Studio Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 13, $19-$26
212-989-2020
themushroomcure.com
www.cherrylanetheatre.org
A hit at the 2014 Fringe Festivals in Edinburgh and New York, Adam Strauss’s cute and charming one-man show about his real-life battle with OCD, The Mushroom Cure, has been extended at the Cherry Lane Studio, in a streamlined, finished version, pared down to a swift eighty-five minutes from its original nearly two-hour length. In the play, Strauss shares the intimate details of his struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder, but he explains that he is not a hand washer, a stove checker, a counter, or any of the more well known types of OCD sufferers. Instead, Strauss has trouble making decisions, whether selecting an MP3 player, figuring out which shirt to wear, or choosing which side of the street to walk down. “Pick the right one pick the right one pick the right one pick the right one!” he says with both frustration and determination. “Go! Go! Go! No! No! No! Go no go no go no go!” He’s tried yoga, meditation, multiple medications, psychotherapy, CBT, and other treatments, but none of them have worked. He then becomes intrigued by a Journal of Clinical Psychiatry report about a study that has shown that in some cases a single does of psychedelic mushrooms can actually cure a person’s OCD. So he sets out on a mission to get his hands on the magic fungi and rid himself of this dread mental illness. In the meantime, Strauss, who is haunted by the breakup with his previous girlfriend, Annie, becomes interested in a Kansas tourist named Grace who is in the city for a psychology conference. But the more they are drawn to each other, the more his OCD threatens to get in the way.
Written by Strauss, a Brooklyn-based stand-up comic, and directed by Jonathan Libman (The Bench, Shall I Fetch the Apparatus?), The Mushroom Cure is an intimate portrait of mental illness, romance, and dick slapping. Strauss, who walks around the nearly empty stage, occasionally sitting in a chair and taking a drink of water from several glasses on a small table, does such an excellent job of relating the character of Grace that afterward you might forget that this was a one-man show, with no actress playing her. Strauss (The Uncertainty Principle) also plays his drug dealer, Slo, as well as his goofball psychiatrist, who calls him “Guy.” Strauss sometimes moves too quickly between self-effacement and self-approval, and the lighting can get a little confusing, particularly when it goes completely off and the audience wonders whether to clap or not. But most of all The Mushroom Cure will delight you and have you laughing at the ridiculousness of it all while also making you think about your own possible OCD, or that of a loved one. “Some of you didn’t think you had OCD when you walked in here, but now you’re like, wait, did this show give me OCD?” It might also have you seeking out magic mushrooms. All profits from the Cherry Lane run will go to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which conducted the study that set Strauss off on his quest, which he generously shares with the rest of us.