Mr. Marmalade
Washington Ensemble Theatre
Through March 16.
Imaginary friends don’t get much worse than Mr. Marmalade. A jackass
businessman with a serious cocaine problem, Mr. Marmalade always
arrives late and leaves early and when he’s not neglectful, he’s
abusive. “Let’s play house!” he shouts at his imaginer, a 4-year-old
named Lucy. “How was work today? It sucked balls, but
someone’s got to provide for this fucking family, you lazy bitch.”
The whole of Mr. Marmalade, which premiered off Broadway in
2005, relies on a single grotesque technique—to document an
abusive courtship and marriage wherein the better half is only 4 years
old. Which raises the question: Why would a 4-year-old girl invent such
a vile imaginary friend?
Playwright Noah Haidle refuses to answer. Lucy’s real world is
mildly depressing (absent father, inattentive mother, slutty
babysitter), but nothing that explains the depths of her masochistic
imagination. Once Haidle has set his grim scene, he’s got nowhere to go
but down, so he piles shock upon shock, building to an unearned, bloody
climax.
Some of Haidle’s bits are comical—like Larry, a 5-year-old boy
(the little brother of the slutty babysitter’s boyfriend), who brags to
Lucy about shoplifting and explains the bandages on his wrists: “That’s
the other reason I have to repeat preschool. I tried to commit
suicide.” And shoving adult dysfunctions through a 4-year-old brain
lets Haidle make some cutting observations—like how playing
doctor is more fun than playing house. But those insights are scarce,
leaving Mr. Marmalade an insignificant showcase of gallows
humor.
The actors playing the imaginary characters are more successful
than the actors playing the real-world ones. Michael Place, as Mr.
Marmalade, rightfully inspires homicidal urges; Marc Kenison, as
Marmalade’s sycophantic personal assistant, inspires pity. But Marya
Sea Kaminski gives a muddy performance as Lucy. It’s a tough
role—sometimes the script needs her to be a kid, sometimes the
script needs her to be a grown-up, and sometimes it needs her to be a
kid pretending to be a grown-up. Kaminski drifts somewhere between 4
and 40 and, like Lucy herself, we never know quite where or why.
BRENDAN KILEY
Tosca
Seattle Opera
Through March 9.
Puccini’s Tosca is old news in the opera world, and a
glance at the program is all you need to see how Seattle Opera feels
about having to stage it. Critics may mock the populist opera and
musicologists may slag it, general director Speight Jenkins writes
in his program notes, “but the public has never cared.” In other words:
Have your melodrama, you opera-grubbing lowlifes. Eat your heart
out.
Which seems disingenuous. Yes, Tosca is a campy
opera—in which a wild diva murders a “lecherous satyr”—but
camp is everywhere in opera, and to have its purveyors try to pretend
they don’t care for it, that they’re reluctantly giving in to public
demand, is just silly.
The first-act set, built by San Francisco Opera, is appropriately
dramatic: the interior of a Roman basilica, all gold-accented grisaille
marble and dizzying Renaissance perspective. But the B cast I saw
Sunday afternoon (with A-level Frank Porretta, for the noticeably
cold-stricken Brandon Jovanovich, as Cavaradossi in the second and
third acts) didn’t quite live up to the grandeur of the
surroundings.
It seemed entirely plausible, for example, that the supposedly
passionate Tosca (Michele Capalbo, whose clear tones are occasionally
overpowered by the orchestra) is only faking jealousy to encourage her
lover’s compliments. This might have been an interesting
choice—Tosca would be more likable if she possessed even a touch
of cunning—but Capalbo’s performance is more petulant than
passionate. Her urge, at the end of the opera, to murder the wicked
Baron Scarpia, just bubbles up. Listen, Seattle Opera, if you know I
crave camp, then give it here! Let’s not be so prissy. ANNIE
WAGNER
The Sweetest Swing in Baseball
ArtsWest
Through March 15.
This play, by Rebecca Gilman, is a kind of Holy Grail: It tackles a
Big Theme (in this case, the question of whether pain is necessary to
create good art, and whether success can ruin an artist) without
getting preachy, and it reaches a clear, satisfying resolution without
being too vague or too neat. The fact that the actors do a fine job is
practically a bonus.
Dana (Heather Hawkins, onstage for the entire show) is a painter
whose career has been in decline. After a halfhearted suicide attempt,
she comes to in a mental hospital and finds it the perfect environment
for an artist: supportive people, lots of food, and unlimited time to
be introspective. When her cheap-ass health insurance gives out, Dana
pretends to believe she’s baseball bad boy Darryl Strawberry to scam
some more time in the institution.
Hawkins treads a fine line, playing a stressed but not delusional
woman without resorting to whining. Her (thankfully Ebonics-free)
“Darryl Strawberry” is less a case of multiple-personality disorder
than an extended metaphor for the artists’ struggle, and she pulls it
off beautifully. The supporting cast, particularly Trick Danneker as a
gentle young nerd in rehab, and Gavin Cummins as a charming sociopath,
add color and humor, but are brave enough to step aside and let Hawkins
take the spotlight. PAUL CONSTANT
