When a pair of identical twin brothers have the same name, how’s a mother supposed to keep them straight?

A woman identified only as Mother, who seems to spend most of her time in bed with her linguistically judgmental Doctor, has problems telling her 28-year-old sons apart. It doesn’t help that Mother — with what the Doctor describes as “symmetry, yes, but not logic” — gave her boys the same name. That’s Otto, or to be exact: OTTO and otto.

The play begins when OTTO tells his mother that he’s leaving home to become Chinese and that his brother no longer exists. This is distressing news for otto, who keeps looking for confirmation that he remains alive. The lovely Maureen, otto’s girlfriend, is pulled into the center of this writhing confusion, becoming the most perplexed character in a play where everybody is terminally perplexed.

Synopsis adapted from an article by Ben Brantley that appeared in The New York Times.

Brantley, Ben. “Ta-ta! Give ’Em the Old Existential Soft-Shoe.” New York Times 28 Jan. 2008. 9 March 2014 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/theater/reviews/28myself.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1394376990-lEkj0sOB3FctOU7cIiN/Eg>.

Type: Full Length Play

Acts: Two

First Performance: 11 January 2008, McCarter Theater Center, Princeton, NJ.; 21 August 2010, Playwrights Horizons, New York