Review: OUT OF CHARACTER at Berkshire Theatre Group

Berkshire Theatre Group (BTG) and Artistic Director, CEO Kate Maguire are currently presenting, OUT OF CHARACTER, the deeply personal and profoundly moving solo play written and performed by Tony Award winner Ari’el Stachel. Directed by Tony Taccone, this innovative production returns to The Unicorn Theatre after its powerful debut as a reading in BTG’s Festival of New Jewish Plays last summer.

OUT OF CHARACTER offers an intimate journey through identity, mental health and self-acceptance. Written and performed by Ari’el Stachel, who won the 2018 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his role in The Band’s Visit, the play is both heartfelt and humorous, blending vulnerability and uplifting storytelling. Directed by Tony Taccone, renowned for commissioning Angels in America and his groundbreaking work at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the production challenges, inspires and celebrates the beauty of embracing one’s true self. The play has been praised as “a compelling exploration of identity and self-acceptance” by The Washington Post, showcasing Stachel’s unique ability to connect deeply with audiences through his “riveting and deeply personal performance.” This fully realized production marks an exciting continuation of Out of Character’s journey from Berkeley Rep to the Berkshires, promising an unforgettable night of theatre that resonates universally.

I have two guidelines that I try to apply when writing about the shows I see, avoid superlatives, and it’s not about me.  OUT OF CHARACTER presents a formidable challenge to both.  While my own life experience presents significant similarities to that of Ari’el Stachel’s (perceived or otherwise), and as it is said: “individual results may vary”, the content of the piece and its ability to touch viewers in a deeply profound and powerful way is, in a word, overwhelming.  Over the course of the immensely entertaining and enjoyable, frenetically paced, roughly hour and a half presentation (without intermission), I smiled, nodded, laughed a great deal, cried (to a much lesser degree), and felt seen, heard, and understood.  At first, I attributed this to my being, Jewish, creative, neurodivergent, living an “alternative lifestyle”, and wearing an invisible pageant sash that reads “Miss Understood”.  In processing the flood of overwhelming emotion post curtain with both my plus one and Mr. Stachel himself, I came to realize that this, gentle readers, is precisely why OUT OF CHARACTER rises to the level of overwhelmingly powerful near brilliance in a theatrical production.  As a subscriber to the notion that “normal” is just a setting on a washing machine, I am relatively firm in the belief that we all have stuff.  Audience members don’t have to have a whole host of characteristics in common with Stachel, nor his individual circumstances, to identify, relate, and be moved, potentially (as in my case) deeply.