I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire, Southwark Playhouse Borough Review
I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire production image. Photo by Manuel Harlan.
Written by Charlotte for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review.
From the Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp to the basement of a 14-year-old superfan, Southwark Playhouse continues its summer of madcap theatre with the UK premiere of Samantha Hurley’s gutsy Y2K farce I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire.
14-year-old Shelby Hinkley is the president of the Tobey Maguire fan club. She knows everything about him – his birthday, his favourite movie, and exactly when and where he’s scheduled for wisdom teeth surgery. After perfectly executing her plan to kidnap, imprison, and marry Tobey in her basement, however, Shelby quickly finds that he may not be the man she’s fantasized about.
Admittedly, the first twenty minutes or so had me worried that this would be little more than a comedy predicated on laughing at the expense of the ‘weird girl’ type whose mannerisms can teeter on neurodivergent stereotypes, but I was very glad to be proven wrong as the twisty underbelly of the show unfurled itself. Hurley’s script is lightning-fast and unpredictable from start to finish, unafraid to pack many a provocative punch into its butterfly clips and Tiger Beat magazines. Don’t be fooled by the lip gloss and side-pony, Hurley’s careful construction of Shelby’s character is unnervingly disturbed, stepping quickly beyond the quirkiness of being fourteen into the delusions of a traumatised child, the ringmaster for a fever-dream you weren’t prepared to have.
Tessa Albertson plays a truly explosive Shelby, overfull with manic teenage energy. But even up against such an extreme, Anders Hayward gives a standout performance as the acerbic Tobey, oscillating between drug-addled apathy and suave stoicism as he riffs on the audience with a delightfully funny deadpan. Rodrigo Hernandez Martinez’s is set likewise becomes a larger-than-life character of its own, plastered floor-to-ceiling with torn out magazine posters and lipstick hearts, coated in fuzzy pink area rugs, and overflowing with early 2000s paraphernalia. Martinez extends this out of the theatre and into the bar, the chalk-marked sidewalk, and even the bathroom stalls, making the scale of Shelby’s obsession as uncontainable as Albertson’s riotous performance.
While it may be a staunch portrait of Y2K adolescence, I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire’s deep dive into cultures of obsession, parasociality, and the behaviours we inherit from our upbringing feels enduringly relevant. Even if the references to dying Tamagotchis and leaving Brittany alone may only land with those of us old enough to remember them, the core of Hurley’s piece has a timeless balance of darkly human themes and outright farcical insanity. I can’t recall the last time a show earned such genuine exclamations of shock from an audience in the same breath as it brought them to fits of laughter. It’s brazen, it’s absurdly funny, and it just might be the star of this wild summer season.
At Southwark Playhouse Borough until 10 August 2024.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
