Director Elizabeth Newman of the Filigree Theatre strayed a bit from her previous repertoire with the world premiere of Take Care of My Friend. Starring Kathleen Fletcher, who wrote the autobiographical play. The five friends included actors Talya Hammerman, Arielle Laguette (lead in Beehive: The 60s Musical), Kerry McGinnis, Molly McKee, and Rachel West.
Six chairs, and six women wearing outfits in various shades of pink. Simple stage with enormous impact. And a huge trigger warning for anyone having or knowing someone with OCD, depression, or anxiety associated with these conditions.
Fletcher deftly narrates her own life story chronologically from her time in Manhattan as a nanny beginning in 2011 to Austin. She weaves humor, tragedy, and deadpan seriousness with equal measure. Her friends act as cohorts to her narrative, taking part, or acting as the repetitively dangerous voices in her head.
She likes to reference popular cultural figures such as RuPaul or Wolverine.
What happens in between is harrowing. While watching the children, she experiments with cooking by creating southern fried chicken, adding two or more inches of oil in a pan which bursts into flames that she thinks water will douse. It does not. What transpires instead are fireballs that land on her, producing 3rd degree burns she denies are 3rd degree burns.
Instead of rushing to the hospital, she calls her unresponsive, distant father, a doctor, who tells her it’s not that bad, confirming her twisted logic of not needing to see a doctor, let alone an ER outpatient room.
Her journey unfolds like skin that needs peeling after the burn incident, in order to regrow into a healthy covering for her deep emotional wounds. Those intrusive and unrelenting thoughts that spiral give the audience a taste of how similar OCD is to an addiction. Any addiction.
The underlying agony Fletcher confronts bravely, not just in this enactment of her life but in her actual life, through therapies and constant monitoring of her condition, shows us that the terror of the flame is worse than the terror of falling into it. Luckily for Fletcher, she had a greater purpose than just her own healing, or maybe despite it, which made her trauma worthy. That was the line someone said to her during one of her darker moments: “Take care of my friend” And that is exactly what Fletcher passed on to others, as well as to herself.
This is the second play in thirty-six hours I’ve seen with the theme of mental health (the other being Dear Evan Hansen).
It is impossible to overemphasize the critical importance in our society of taking care of our friends, whoever they may be. Fletcher’s portrait reminds us.
Running through April 25 at Hyde Park Theatre at 511 West 43rd Street, get your tickets https://tickets.atxtheatre.org/events/the-filigree-theatre-presents-kathleen-fletchers-take-care-of-my-friend-world-premiere-5-14-2026