Theatre review: I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire

Turning Misery into (more of) a black comedy, Samantha Hurley's New York hit I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire transfers to Southwark Playhouse with its original director, designer and leading lady - the latter's performance being a big part of what sells... whatever it is that's going on here. Set in 2004, around the time that the internet started to be fast enough and ubiquitous enough to help blur the lines between fandom and stalking, Shelby Hinkley (Tessa Albertson) is the 14-year-old president of the Tobey Maguire fan club, whose regular video messages to members include an update on the actor's current whereabouts. It turns out she's got a specific plan for this information though, and when Tobey (Anders Hayward) gets anaesthetised to get his wisdom teeth removed, she's ready to grab him from an LA dentist's practice, stuff him in a duffle bag and onto a coach, and chain him up in her basement in South Dakota.

There she convinces him (with the help of a stun gun) to "marry" her, but as she gets to know the real person behind the posters her already frail mental health takes a further knock. Meanwhile Tobey finds her copy of Kidnapping for Dummies, and hatches a plan to convince her he has Stockholm Syndrome so she'll trust and release him.

A section of the theatre bar has been dedicated as a shrine to Tobey Maguire, but it's nothing to designer Rodrigo Hernandez Martinez' decoration of every inch of The Little, the audience surrounded by walls papered with mid-2000s magazine photos of the actor staring down at us to the point that it's already oppressive before the show's even started: I couldn't help wondering if the real Maguire ever saw the New York run, and if so how long it took for him to have a complete Being John Malkovich meltdown.

It's certainly an accurate indicator of the ferocious intensity of Tyler Struble's production, and Albertson is absolutely spectacular as the teenager whose emotions veer wildly between excitement, depression, anger and fear, all of them at a level somewhere around 1000%. Both the writing and the performance are very funny but always keep that edge of Shelby being a vulnerable, bullied, frightened little girl with a family background she's not being entirely honest about. But I also liked how Shelby's breakdown at finding the real Tobey doesn't match her fantasy is mirrored in Tobey himself, who ends up having conversations with a poster of himself (Kyle Birch) and huffing spray paint in a corner as he tries to reconcile himself with his public image.

For the most part Hurley's approach of throwing everything at the play to see what sticks is successful, although a suggestion of metatheatricality (Shelby mentions knowing it's a play and what it's called, while Hayward has an extended, borderline sinister bit of audience interaction) is half-baked and goes nowhere. There's only one running joke that really doesn't translate across the Atlantic (and gets run into the ground as well,) and that's only because Americans are perpetually baffled by foreskins, and assume the rest of the world is too.

Otherwise the comic hit rate is very good, whether it's the celebrity references (like Tobey being under constant threat of being replaced as Spider-Man by Jake Gyllenhaal, or a joke about Leonardo DiCaprio's dating preferences that's inevitable but beautifully timed,) the incredibly dark stuff around mental health and obsession, or the show just leaning into gleefully stupid gags (like the conclusion to a subplot involving Birch's estate agent Brenda Dee Cankles.) There's also a nice attention to detail in terms of visual gags, like the cover of Kidnapping for Dummies (a photo of a van with FREE CANDY scrawled on it) or costume designer Reuben Speed having Tobey wear Spider-Man underwear under his Spidey-suit*. Yes, I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire is the sort of show that has you asking "what the hell am I watching?" half the time, but not without knowing that whatever it is is some weird level of genius.

I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire by Samantha Hurley is booking until the 10th of August at Southwark Playhouse Borough's Little Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

*in an example of nature giving with one hand and taking away with the other, Hayward is almost ethereally handsome but also has absolutely no arse, so putting him in lycra feels downright cruel and unusual