Masterful ‘Marmalade’ anything but child’s play

Victoria Cheng

Any theatrical venture in which young children, sex, violence and drugs cross paths is bound to court its share of controversy. Company One’s production of “Mr. Marmalade,” a play premised on the relationship between a four-year-old girl and her physically abusive, drug- and pornography-addicted imaginary friend, welcomes the debate with open arms.

The play’s opening scene sets the pace for a raucous show, as Lucy, a preternaturally articulate preschooler (played with bright-eyed effervescence by Bard College grad and Company One newcomer Rachael Hunt) demands of Mr. Marmalade, “Why don’t you touch me anymore? Is there somebody else?”

Mr. Marmalade (a simultaneously charming and sleazy John Kuntz) presents a new twist on the age-old idea of an imaginary friend: a smooth-talking corporate shill who brings Lucy roses and chocolate, makes suggestive comments about Lucy’s young and single mother, and has a proclivity towards violence, intoxicants and pornography when stressed out.

Publicity for the play emphatically points to the production’s mature content: Lucy is depicted on the promotional flyer with one camisole strap seductively slipping off her shoulder as she dangles a Mr. Marmalade doll in her hand. “See Lucy run. WILD,” the flyer proclaims.

This is the edgy script that made its off-Broadway debut in November 2005 and that, apparently, no other theater company in Boston would touch. In the program notes, Company One Artistic Director Shawn LaCount describes the work with a spectrum of adjectives, from “dark” and “sick” to “funny,” “smart” and “urban.”

The play has plenty of scenes laden with shock value. A graphically hands-on game of doctor, as well as the full revelation of Mr. Marmalade’s violent and misogynistic tendencies, had many people squirming in their seats.

But the play is also a meditation on the nature of childhood. Beyond the play’s drugged and sexualized antics lies a finely spun warning that youth, while usually viewed as idyllically carefree, can be melancholically — and tragically — tinged with loneliness and self-doubt.

Lucy seems to have conjured up the presence of Mr. Marmalade in response to the negligent adult world rushing past her. Her mother and her teenage babysitter are both more interested in attracting men than in interacting with a four-year-old with an overactive imagination.

“Babysitter’ll be here in half an hour. Can you hold down the fort until then?” Lucy’s mom asks before running out on yet another date. Lucy’s desperate appeals for Mr. Marmalade to stay and pay attention to her hint at what she would say to the real people in her life — if only they would listen.

Lucy’s five-year-old and only non-imaginary friend Larry (a hilariously manic and lisping Greg Maraio) is the youngest person to attempt suicide in New Jersey. His morose explanation for the attempt — “Everybody says, ‘Enjoy your childhood while it lasts,’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t enjoy this at all’” — pointedly contests the pat belief that children are inherently and ignorantly happy.

In one of the play’s many heartbreaking moments, Lucy, at Mr. Marmalade’s instigation, tells Larry to leave. When he protests that their friendship helped him stave off loneliness, Lucy sadly replies, “I was here with you, Larry, but I was still lonely.”

Such observations, voiced as they are by adults acting as children, resonate as bleak diagnoses of both the real world and the world of make believe, and the dialogue in “Mr. Marmalade” draws much of its poignancy from this interplay.

When told that Lucy is four years old, Lucy’s mom’s one-night stand remarks that “that must be nice.” “Yeah,” Lucy says dryly. “It’s a walk in the park.” Spoken near the end of the play and juxtaposed against the emotional roller coaster of the 90 minutes that came before it, Lucy’s remark is painfully ironic.

The technique of using child’s play to comment on adulthood serves more lighthearted purposes as well. As the “Shrek” film trilogy aptly demonstrated, such double-entendre can be milked for lucrative comedic effect.

In a satiric take on the gender-role implications of children playing house, Lucy declares that she is pregnant with Larry’s child and he responds by burying his head in a blanket while rocking back and forth.

When Lucy brags to Larry’s own imaginary friends — a frat-boyish duo of houseplants — that Larry is a banker who “makes a very good salary and great benefits,” they snicker knowingly and head into the living room for a no-holds-barred food fight.

Hunt, who stays on stage for almost every minute of the production, scampers, twirls and stands on tiptoe throughout her convincing portrayal of an energetic and easily distracted child.

She deftly juggles the tension between childish behavior and adult conversation, creating in Lucy a knowing innocence that renders moot questions about whether or how a four-year-old could be as worldly as Lucy is.

“How do I look?” asks the babysitter as her boyfriend knocks at the door. “Easy!” Lucy answers in gleeful singsong.

Alternately unctuous or enraged as Lucy’s Mr. Marmalade, Kuntz plays each facet with passionate flair, imbuing the suave, finger-snapping, shoulder-shaking Mr. M with as much panache as he brings dark realism to his beer-swilling, wife-beater-clad alter ego.

Despite Mr. Marmalade’s inflammatory presence, however, he is ultimately no more than one of the many characters swirling around Lucy. Stationed in the center of the living room set, between the simple couch and phantom TV, it is Lucy who anchors the action.

As Lucy stumbles through one mishap after another, her imaginary world provides a canvas on which her troubles play out. It is there that she can stand up for Mr. Marmalade’s beleaguered personal assistant (gracefully played with astute humor by Daniel Berger-Jones); there that she confronts the anger she sees simmering in the adult world around her; and there that she can attempt to untangle the dilemmas that she has created.

Whether she is trying with futility to silence a crying baby or figuring out how to handle an abusive Mr. Marmalade, it is Lucy who dictates the terms of engagement: the world of make believe, however dark its vision, belongs wholly and completely to her.