Mr. Marmalade

I’m Isa Goldberg reporting on MR. MARMALADE at the Roundabout Theater.

Here’s an off-beat story that erupts like the projectiles of a child’s imagination. He, Mr. Marmalade, is a buttoned up business man who carries a play tea set in his briefcase. A sympathetic buttoned up sort, he has little time for his wife, the 4-year old Lucy, played by the adult actress Mamie Gummer.

The flippant comedy proceeds through a series of nearly surreal scenes, framed by projected titles to give continuity to the episodic tale. But the distinction between a child’s imagination and reality are difficult to discern throughout most of Noah Haidle’s new play, and some of it is difficult to watch, especially when Mr. Marmalade, having quit his job and his coke habit, settles down with Lucy, even giving her a baby. The outcome to that scene is right out of the evening news in which Mr. Marmalade descends into an abusive drunk and Lucy, in a fatal attempt to hold onto him, kills her screaming newborn.

We can all share this projection of the mother acting out her childhood reality. To his credit, Mr. Haidle has concocted a study of rejection that while cacophonous is insanely expressive. Take the scene with Lucy and her playmate, Larry a 5-year old who’s 6-feet tall. When he arrives, bearing gifts of Fruit Loops and Twinkies to lure Lucy into her favorite game of Doctors, the show turns into a vaudeville act in which the two misfits reveal a mutual sense of neglect.

If you haven’t gathered it yet, Lucy is left alone at home almost all day. Rejection, at least as it appears here, is a strange and estranged state. Putting it all together requires an active role for the audience.

Much assistance is given by Michael Greif who gives his utmost trust to the truthfulness of the story and by Michael C. Hall, the actor from “Six Feet Under”. He appears here as Mr. Marmalade, husband, coke addict, sex offender and derelict, not to mention a glorious finale in which he commits hari kari. That scene is right out of a Japanese ballet.

Mamie Gummer is perfect as the 4-year old Lucy and Pablo Schreiber plays Larry with a grin so wide, he could let the world roll in.

That’s This Week Off Broadway. I’m Isa Goldberg.