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.

Gibbs' Head Slap

The trouble with being a slow thinker is that it removes me from the primary interest stream of "Today's News."  This is old news to the people who care and unimportant news to everyone else.  This is why my blog is silly.  Nevertheless....this is what interests me today as I just rewatched the February 7, 200th Episode of NCIS, called "Life Before His Eyes."

Gibbs staring down the bullet.

That's why I'm only posting now about the 200th episode of NCIS -- the A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life episode in which Gibbs is visited by the "ghosts" of past and possibility as a bullet moves slowly toward him.  During the milliseconds of bullet travel time, his unconscious mind gives him both negative and positive messages about how he lived his life.  It's a trip into the memory vortex we all will take.

Negative:

• If Gibbs hadn't encouraged her, his wife would not have testified against the drug dealer who had her and Gibbs' daughter murdered.
• if Gibbs had been perceptive enough to spot Ari on the rooftop and kill him, Kate wouldn't have been shot, she and Tony (and Tim and Abby) would have gotten together and Kate would have had Tony's kid.

Positive:

• if Gibbs had remained a Marine, rather than becoming an NCIS agent, his wife and daughter would have suffered from having Marines come to the door with the message of his death in the first Iraq war. 

"If you'd stayed a Marine, Gibbs, the loss would have fallen on us instead."

• if he had remained a Marine, he would have not have brought all those murderers to justice. 
• if Kate hadn't been shot by Ari, Ziva would have remained in Mosad (but she and Tony would still have met).
• if Gibbs had not murdered the drug dealer who killed his family, he would have quit NCIS early and become a mean, reclusive drunk in his basement, making a rocker and a hope chest rather than a boat, and insulting the caring Abby, Tim, and Ducky.
• thus, if he hadn't killed the drug lord he would not have solved all those cases and brought all those people to justice.



Gibb's and the memory of his mother.

• Gibb's mom says she's proud of who he was as a boy, proud of who he became as a man.

What we discover about the Gibbs by the end:

• He believes his mother was proud of him even though she never said so.  This explains why he rarely praises the people he loves.
• He believes that his mistake in not shooting a badguy resulted in less life and love for his young colleagues.   
• He believes that his action of murdering a different badguy was ultimately justified.
• Although he says he is just doing his job, he believes, deep down, that his job is very, very important.  This last belief winds up being underlined in the non-dream world by Tim McGee who decides to turn down a better job in Japan in order to stay with the crew he knows and loves.

Why is all this important to us 20.98 million viewers (according to TVPressfeed) of the 200th episode?  To the extent that we admire or identify with Gibbs, it allows us to think about how we would address our own mortality and life choices.  In doing so, it also provides us with a "tragic view" of life as it shows good and bad in balance with bad sometimes winning out. At least twice Gibbs says that he wanted things to be different, once when he says about work and family,  "But I wanted both."  He is told, at least twice:  "It doesn't work like that."

Another lesson Gibbs learns is that, as the Bible says, "No man knows the day or the hour" of his own death.   Several times during the show Gibbs says, "I didn't expect this." The universe Gibbs inhabits is a chaotic one where humans are not in charge.

This is a rare point of view for  an American drama, especially a police procedural.  Usually, the American worldview is one in which good is achievable, in which the heroes get what they want and need and the bad guys suffer.  The very reason people enjoy detective shows, according to some theorists, is because they offer the promise of order.  In the world of Gibbs' unconscious mind, however, the good guys suffer from the world's unmanageable disorder.  The Good News is that, through their suffering, they make a difference for the rest of us.

Creative Nonfiction

Last night I was inspired by Greg Lyons' nonfiction class.  Not by their work (I'm not privy to that), but by the reasons they gave for doing that work.

I asked them to talk about the "best thing" about writing but by the time the assignment slid onto the third row, the students were saying "what I like best about . . ." or "what I enjoy about . . ." rather than "the best thing."  Was this because they had an innate or encultured  realization that they couldn't honestly speak for everyone?  Or was it because they've (we've?) grown up in a culture which assumes that the individual is special and, in some consumerist Kantian way, thinks, "I am the measure of all things."

Well, in America, we have the socially and legally negotiated "God-given" right to pursue happiness so why not measure the world like an artist in the movies, forever peering past and beyond an upraised thumb?

from ArtGraphica.net

But back to how they inspired me.  (Yeah, that's a sucky transition.  So sue me.)

They told me that writing was important and enjoyable because it allowed access to the subconscious, provided a way to speak one's truth, provided access to the pleasure of moving characters around, and because they had to.   Sadly, this last has never been my gift.  Unlike the great graphomaniacs -- Isaac Asimov, Joyce Carol Oats, Kenneth Burke, Stephen King -- I don't find writing addicting or soothing.  I find it annoying, difficult, and hard on my lower back.  So, I'll have to go with those students who said that they wrote to tell their truths and to get access to the subconscious.

The question for me is, is this blog the place to do that?