Edinburgh Fringe 2024
1, 2, 3. Sh*t, that’s my OCD
AM•UAЯT
Genre: One Person Show, Theatre
Venue: Just the Tonic
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Struggling with OCD, Tina tries to understand her condition and where it comes from. But the more she challenges her OCD, the more her condition fights back, taking her to even darker places. A gritty dive into mental health disorders.
Review
A one-woman play of a girl struggling with OCD and PTSD. This show highlights the trouble young women face from men and how it interlinks with those who suffer from mental health conditions.
This play sprints through the life of Tina, who struggles with OCD. Investigating the grittier side of the condition and not the stereotype often perpetuated in standard conversation. It looks into the repetitive cycles of her disorder and how they manifest in the brain. We jump back and forth through events of her life affected by OCD and PTSD of previous men. The play also tackles the abuse women face from men and uses voice extracts from real women about their problems with men. It jumps from place to place, switching stories constantly, giving you a sense of how it is to live in the mind of someone who has OCD and ADHD. She’s imprisoned in her own mind and I felt caged in with her, like there’s no escape. The more she challenges her OCD, the more the condition fights back, taking her to even darker places.
The actor (Bibi Couceiro) would break the fourth wall and interact with individual people in the crowd if she didn’t believe they were properly listening. This made me feel, as an audience member, that I had to engage with the severity of the material and that I couldn’t shy away from the strong topic.
All the trigger warnings are there at the start, but this is a punchy, in-your-face showcase of what it is like to have OCD. A show highlighting the real, darker side of this disorder along with other mental health conditions. This show is a smacking reality check for those who don’t have mental health disorders and is an incredibly heavy piece of theatre.
This is very bold and audacious work. I was impressed that the writer (Bibi Couceiro) and director (Ana Bel Golim) were willing to go into the depths of this disorder to bring its guts to the surface. It is incredibly hard-hitting and dares to take the audience to a dark place. It was tough and it made me feel very heavy at certain points in the play. Some of the intrusive thoughts and moments the main character experienced in the play were very relatable. Once I was with her empathetically, I felt trapped with her in the cycles. The parts where she didn’t “feel normal” also felt relatable and made me empathise deeply with the character. By the end of the play, I left feeling the full weight of what I had just seen and I felt that weight long after the play finished.
The comedy between the heavy parts of the script was effective but I wonder if they could go further with these moments so the whole thing doesn’t feel so intense. However, I respect and understand that this may have been what they were aiming for and if so, it definitely had a strong personal impact on me.
Vulnerable, brave and bold. This is an uncomfortable piece that immerses the audience in the experience of going through OCD.
