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Opined November 23, 2005
MR. MARMALADE - A New Play by Noah Haidlem Directed by Michael Greif
With Michael Chernus (A Number), David Costabile (Caroline or Change), Mamie
Gummer, Pablo Schreiber, and Virginia Louise Smith (Twentieth Century).
Roundabout Theatre Company at Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46th Street (between 6th & 7th Aves)
Through January 29th, 2006
This isn’t the best play I ever saw and it’s not the worst. It is entering into an ever-
widening chasm in my brain called the Gray Zone. Lucy, a four-year-old child (Gummer)
has an imaginary life that flows in and out of fact-based life like a silk scarf in a breeze. It’
s a life that I recognize because I had one, and sometimes still do. Lucy’s imaginary
playmates are not children like her, but full grown men with jobs and responsibilities. She
interacts with them with grown up language and gusto that leaves us a little shaken as we
see what she sees: materialism and callous manners sprout up to fill the up the life of a
four year old who is left a lone just a little too much. Where this production, specifically
the writing, tossed me out of the boat was when the fact checker and the story line parted
ways. Lucy’s mother leaves her alone several times as if she were a much older child,
Lucy’s real four-year-old friend Larry is obsessed with self worth, futility and suicide, and
when the imaginary Mr. Marmalade threatens to leave – Lucy kills their imaginary baby.
Just a scooch over the line.
You might want to go to this just to watch Mamie Gummer look an awful lot like her
mom, Meryl Streep, but after awhile you will forget whose daughter she is and enjoy her
work. She is a young person and actor, and this is her Off Broadway debut. She is lovely
to watch and often quite charming, but not so much that it stops you from wondering if
she got this because of her heritage as opposed to her skill.
Still there is a very nice tone to this piece. The cast, with Virginia Louise Smith and David
Costabile both playing several roles, seems to be having a pretty darn good time. It is after
all, fantasy, so no holds are barred as the play leaps to the grandest heights of love (airline
tickets, chandeliers and Redi-Whip) to abandonment (alcoholism, domestic violence and
infanticide). It’s sort of a Spill and Spell jar of scenes, as though the author sat down with
a bunch of adolescents and said – “OK, quick – give me a fantasy – good or bad it doesn’t
matter.”
At the end, everyone has worked hard all over one of the most visually abusive sets I have
ever seen: all 1970’s repeating geometric shapes in various shades of mauve and liver.
Lucy dismisses one imaginary playmate, hires another and goes outside to play like a
normal kid. We go home thinking about our imaginary friends and that’s that.
Next case.
©2005 Tulis McCall