Disturbing thriller and farcical comedy smashed together with the world of Tobey Maguire.
I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire is now playing in London following a successful debut in New York last year. It describes itself as a comedy, but this description is wholly inadequate. A dark comedy? Perhaps. A comedy thriller? Maybe. A disturbing darkly comic show that descends into farce? Probably. This show is written by Samantha Hurley, directed by Tyler Struble, and stars Tessa Alberton, reprising the role she played in New York, as Shelby Hinkley. Shelby is the 14 year old president of the Tobey Maguire fan club, and she just so happens to have kidnapped Tobey, played by Anders Hayward, and is keeping him in her basement.
From the title of this show, and the description as a straight comedy, I was expecting a camp-tastic ridiculous out and out laugh a minute comedy. When the show actually started, I spent a solid 30 minutes without a single laugh. We are introduced to Shelby as a manic and lonely fan girl who has kidnapped a man and is holding him hostage. There were a few comedic lines, but the set up and the way they were played really made them more disturbing to me than comedic. This is in no way saying it was bad, it just really went against my expectations, which perhaps made it have even more of an impact. The comedy does start to build more, with some surprisingly heartwarming moments, and then the final 15-20 minutes was some of the funniest theatre I have seen in a long time.
Kyle Birch as Brenda Dee Cankles is an absolute highlight, drawing the biggest laughs of the entire show as an outrageous and over the top estate agent. The character itself only appears twice, but is very memorable on both occasions. Birch is hugely entertaining, but I still don’t fully understand the character. Brenda seems to come out of both nowhere and a whole other planet. It brings such a different energy to the show that I still cannot decide if she was real in the world of the show, or a joint drug addled psychosis by the other characters. Either way, an absolute highlight.
The 3 actors in this show all gave strong performances, but Tessa Alberton gives a tour de force performance and completely disappears into the role of a 14 year old superfan. She is energetic, sorrowful, ridiculous, menacing at times, and absolutely captivating to watch. She performs really well with Hayward and the interactions between the two are the bedrock of the show.
The scenic design by Rodrigo Hernandez Martinez is brilliant, with countless annotated posters of Tobey plastered all over the walls. I highly recommend arriving early to this show so that you have some time to look at the walls around the stage and behind the audience.
One particularly funny moment that was specific to press night was when Hayward does some “awkward audience interaction” where Tobey muses on the difficulties of fame and the effects of proximity to fame. The audience member that he pointed out to speak with about this however, was singer/songwriter/youtuber Dodie, someone rather famous herself, so this added some extra laughs for some of those in the audience.
In conclusion, this show is tonally very interesting and unique, in a way that works most of the time, but the melding of some of the more disturbing aspects with high farcical comedy sometimes felt a bit clumsy. However, I wholeheartedly recommend this show if you want a good night out, and also if you just want to learn a little bit more about Tobey Maguire’s life in 2004.