A murder mystery at Hilarities in Cleveland is drawing criticism from one of the city’s well-known comedians.
Deena Nyer Mendlowitz has been performing in Northeast Ohio for more than two decades, using her comedy to destigmatize mental illness.
“I've lived with suicidal thoughts for the majority of my life,” she said. “It's something called chronic suicidal ideation. I also live with depression and anxiety.”
She hosts a live comedy talk show, “Mental Illness and Friends,” which was recently at the BorderLight Theatre Festival. She’s also performed many times at Hilarities. When the club, which draws national talent to its stages Downtown, announced a run this fall of “Psych Ward Whackers,” she immediately contacted organizers to offer script notes and other assistance from the viewpoint of someone living with mental health challenges.
“I really tried to approach it from a place of curiosity,” she said. “The amount of stigma still around psych hospitals and going into a psych hospital is huge. It can be deadly, because people will choose not to go in because it doesn't seem like a place that's okay or safe.”
Mendlowitz jokes about mental illness on a regular basis, but she said she tries to do it without stigmatizing.
“There's a lot of talk in comedy about punching up and not punching down,” she said.
When she reached out to Hilarities, Mendlowitz said she was not trying to protest or shut down the show, but asked Hilarities talent booker Sam Klima if he would change the production’s title and marketing imagery. Klima did not make anys changes. He declined Ideastream’s request for an interview but provided the following statement:
Pysch Ward Whacker is a Murder Mystery Dinner Party first produced over a decade ago on the Frolic Stage that began with the question: “What if Billy Joel’s music could heal the world?” In the lyrics to Joel’s You May be Right he sings “I just may be the lunatic you’re looking for” which sowed the idea of admitting patients to a fictitious startup mental facility that was raising awareness and funds for Billy Joel Music Therapy. Since it’s a comedy, the patients admitted themselves for the made-up affliction of wanting too much attention. It became a gentle satire of internet culture and the pursuit of Views, Likes and Celebrity and seems even more relevant today.
The show does not pretend that this is what a real mental facility is like or that attention-seeking is a real mental illness or that the clinic’s treatments are sanctioned by any reputable mental health board. The murder in question happens offstage days prior to the events portrayed on stage and does not happen to a patient or for reasons that would stigmatize mental illness. We hope that audiences laugh and sing along as much or more for this updated version as they did in its original sold-out run.
The piece has been performed before, as far back as 2011. At that time, in a review for the Plain Dealer, critic Laura DeMarco acknowledged that the title was “not the most PC term, but nothing is sacred in this ribald, campy romp.”
That doesn’t have to be the only approach in art, said Dr. Cyntia Davis Seng, a Cleveland Clinic psychiatrist and director of its adult HDHD program.
She said some media, whether horror films or Halloween-themed “haunted insane asylum” attractions, can perpetuate negative stereotypes.
“That ends up creating stigma around what are actually very common medical conditions,” she said. “In the past, we understood much less about the brain and therefore it was kind of the final frontier and very scary. But it's 2025, and we know now that these are largely treatable and not nearly as scary.”
Davis Seng recently produced and co-wrote the psychological thriller “Beneath the Light,” filmed at Lorain’s historic lighthouse. She said the film was meant to be redemptive instead of a gory slasher.
“I think if you start ... from the position of, ‘I'm not going to stigmatize, hyperbolize or be inaccurate, but I am going to include those dark places in the mix,’ you can turn horror into something that is cathartic and allows people to explore dark, scary spaces,” she said.
When asked if anything should be off the table in comedy, Davis Seng described herself as a “free speech girlie” but said that some topics are simply not funny.
“The truth is, not everything can be approached without considering the social impact,” she said.
