Writer: Samantha Hurley
Director: Tyler Struble
There was a period when Tobey Maguire was the hottest actor in Hollywood. From Spider-Man to Seabiscuit, his face was all over the movies, which meant he was all over the teen magazines as well.
And then, one day, he wasn’t. When an actor no longer gets work, all sorts of rumours about why can spring up. Is the move into producing films a cover for not being cast because of a bad reputation? A horrible character in the Aaron Sorkin film Molly’s Game, said to be based at least partly on Maguire, might suggest so. But maybe, just maybe, he disappeared because he was imprisoned in a 14-year-old’s basement.
In Samantha Hurley’s raucously surreal comedy, I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire, obsessive fan Shelby (Tessa Albertson) has abducted the Hollywood star and has imprisoned him in the basement of her mother’s South Dakota home. An obsessive fan, her walls are covered in posters of the star, and she has proclaimed herself president of the Tobey Maguire Fan Club, although she has not revealed to the other members that she is holding their idol hostage and intends to marry him.
Anders Hayward’s Tobey captures both the laconic charm of the actor’s screen roles with a steelier, more bitter edge that would naturally come to the fore when one is handcuffed in a psychotic stranger’s basement. Deprived of food and sanitation, his attempts to sniff aerosol paint to take the edge off help to contribute to some surreal moments, including when he begins conversing with a life-size poster of himself. That the poster is played by Kyle Birch, an actor who could not be physically more different from either Hayward or Maguire, adds to the bizarre comedy.
But most of the humour comes from Albertson’s frenetically pathetic Shelby. Weighed down by the demands of an unseen mother (also Birch), an absent father who had his own mental health problems and a school life consisting of no friends and only bullies, Shelby’s flights of fancy may be delusional and psychotic, but there is an ever-present tinge of sadness in amongst the weirdness.
Albertson, who played the same role in the play’s New York debut, creates a monstrous, charming, devious, likeable kidnapper. Her unpredictability and a penchant for shout-singing raucous karaoke versions of early 2000s pop hits fit the dynamic energy within Hurley’s script, which never settles down into anything resembling predictability.
That includes a brief stand-up segment by Hayward, still in character as Maguire but cognisant of, and engaging with, the audience. The routine reflects some of the ordeal Maguire went through in his first Spider-Man outing; while Hurley’s version of the actor may be insufferable, it’s clear that no actor should have had to endure what he did on set.
There is a small message about how to treat others, whether it’s the stars we admire from afar, where the relationships are one-sided (often based on PR-crafted images that are a sidestep away from reality), or the familial ones nearer home.
But looking too deep for meaning in this relentlessly weird play would detract from its comedic highlights. This is Misery, mostly played for laughs, portrayed on stage in a way that could not be quite so effective on film or in the pages of a book.
In the play, much is made of Stockholm Syndrome, the theory that captives end up falling in love with their captors. While professional psychologists dispute whether such a syndrome exists, one thing is for sure: if the madcap, bizarre humour of Samantha Hurley’s I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire is for you, there is a good chance of falling for this twisted, fractured, damaged life of a teenage kidnapper.
Continues until 10 August 2024
