Digesting Mr. Marmalade

Lucy (Sky Stafford) and Mr. Marmalade (Alastair Morley Jaques)

Was it synchronicity that took me to a Innovation Theater Work's production of Noah Haidle's Mr. Marmalade when I'm undergoing deep analysis?  It was interesting to watch a "comedy" about child abuse at a time when I'm reviewing family-of-origin traumas with a local professional in hopes of managing my own late-midlife crisis.

A comedy about child-abuse you say?

Whodathunkit!  And why would I go to such a show?
Well, notices for the show don't mention that it's about child abuse, for one.  They noted that it was about a little girl and her "cocaine addict" imaginary friend.  That sounded very un-Bendlike and as my friends know, I appreciate things that aren't all outdoorsy and wholesome.  And it stars one of my favorite local actors, Alastair Morley Jaques, as the titular character,  Mr. Marmalade.  When the play opened in New York City in 2005, that role was played by Michael C. Hall, now most recognizable as the star of Showtime's serial-killer series, Dexter.

One of the conceits of the show is the use of an obviously sexually mature woman  dressed in a tight shirt and short ballet skirt as the pigtailed, four-year old  Lucy.  In our local version the role was played by the amazing Skye Stafford, who captures the awkwardness of the child and manages to deliver even  the most unbelievable lines with deep intelligence and panache. On the Innovation Theatre Website, she says that she was attracted to the show's challenge: "How could I keep the dry, adult humor and bring out the toddler at the same time? It was an interesting problem that I definitely wanted to pursue."

The show "takes place in the home and mind of Lucy sometime this year."  It focuses on her relationships with Mr. Marmalade, his assistant Bradley, and the non-imaginary Larry, a five year old boy played by the grown-up,  Brad Knowles.  Supposedly, having an attractive woman with a bust playing the child Lucy is a way of showing us that Lucy already sees herself as someone like her mother, a woman who leaves Lucy alone on occasion.  When Lucy isn't left to fend for herself, she is in the hands of Emily, a girl who smokes cigarettes and has sex with her boyfriend, subjects the preternaturally sophisticated Lucy comments on several times.

Brad Hills, who designed the brightly colored production, with its stick figure graphics and giant children's blocks,  says in the program that the show is "A play that I thought might be a little risky, a little unsettling."  Ya think?

During the evening, I heard the small audience laughing at jokes related to Larry's being beaten and his attempts at suicide.  Are there people who think that it's humorous that a young child would attempt suicide?  Seemingly there were such people in last night's audience.  I myself was doing a little deep breathing to avoid being triggered.

There were also the laughs responding to Lucy and Larry playing "Doctor," a game in which she makes Larry undress and grabs his equipment beneath his underwear.  Then she invites him to do the same to her.  Mercifully, this invitation is followed by a blackout.  But we are clearly meant to understand that in Lucy's world, she is having what she counts as sex, having witnessed both her mother and her babysitter going into the bedroom to "play doctor"? 

At the intermission, when I mentioned my disquiet, someone said that the four year old might be sex-positive.  I didn't argue, but this is what I was thinking: a sex-positive four year old is going to be playing with herself or honestly looking at another child's equipment without shame.  She will not be attempting a verbal seduction game unless she has learned it from someone else, some older other who at some point took advantage of her.  Now, I may be wrong about that.  I'm not a psychologist, after all.  And yet.... it was all very disturbing.

Mr. Jaques recognizes the play's challenging nature.  In an interview he said it "seeks to tell the truth in an original, often disturbing, always humorous way; in a way that is frequently challenging and uncomfortable for both the audience and the actors."  I agree with him and think he does an excellent job bringing to life this disturbing image of a young girl's fantasy father/lover/betrayer. 

Charles Isherwood of the New York Times, wrote this about Mr. Marmalade in 2005:

     [Noah Haidle's] thesis: a toxic combination of neglect and exposure to the noisy dysfunction in the cultural ether could so warp a tyke's psyche that she dreams up a pal who prefers sex toys to tea parties. Gasps of uncomfortable laughter arise from the audience as the bewildered Lucy negotiates the mood swings of her now-cuddly, now-abusive friend, aping the enabling instincts of her elders. Besieged by loneliness, she seeks his love even after benign neglect - a delayed brunch date - gives way to physical and emotional violence. In a world permeated with chatter about sex and commitment and issues of self-esteem, the play argues, no child is left behind for long.

     But Lucy's interior world is so patently incredible as the creation of a 4-year-old mind, however marinated in the scream-fests of daytime television and episodes of "Law & Order: SVU," that the author never really even dips his toe into the painful emotional undercurrents beneath the play's antic comic surface. Instead, he settles too easily and too consistently for cheap laughs. . . . . 

I appreciate that last line.  I generally like dark comedies and have greatly enjoyed the blood-soaked laughs in Martin McDonagh's great plays, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Pillowman, and A Behanding in Spokane.  These shows are also uncomfortable as they address issues of violence, torture, substance abuse, and rage while implicating us audience members as people who could become either killers or victims just as easily.

I guess that's what I missed in last night's show.  I felt as though the playwright didn't really believe that such suffering exists nor that, to the extent that we disbelieve, that we are culpable in its creation.

Nevertheless, I am happy that this local company is tackling difficult plays.  I look forward to seeing their Waiting for Godot and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You.

Sadly, Mr. Marmalade closes tomorrow, Sunday, March 18 so you may not have the chance to argue with me about this post.