Mr. Marmalade

'Mr. Marmalade'

Hyde Park Theatre, through Aug. 25

These are hard times for an imaginary friend. Gone are the days when one could just meander about the Hundred Acre Wood or frolic in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee. Now, you're expected in the office at all hours, there's the 401(k) to worry about, and the pressure is unbelievable. Take Mr. Marmalade: He's so swamped that he's barely been able to squeeze in any face time with little 4-year-old Lucy, and when he does show up, he looks like he's fresh from a boardroom smackdown with Donald Trump. It's no wonder he occasionally needs a little, um, pick-me-up from that bag in his briefcase or that he sometimes loses his temper with his personal assistant, Bradley. Watching this browbeating, blow-snorting businessman blast through Noah Haidle's play, you come to figure that Pooh and Puff really had it easy.

Or maybe it's the kids who played with Pooh and Puff and others of their ilk who had it easy. Their fantasy pals were sweet-natured and gentle, boon companions for lighthearted adventures in forests and caves and on the high seas. Poor Lucy uses her time with Mr. Marmalade to act out domestic scenarios in which relations between wife and husband quickly deteriorate into disputes over his emotional distance and possible infidelity. Ah well, it isn't as if Lucy has much of a home life to draw from. When her single mom isn't schlepping coffee at a diner, she's going out with guys and then bringing them back to the house for one-night stands. The world Lucy knows is one of domestic instability, emotional abandonment, and cheap sex. And things are even worse for Larry, the stepbrother of her babysitter's boyfriend who gets unceremoniously dumped on Lucy while the randy teens go at it upstairs. This 5-year-old is so lonely and alienated that he's already slit his wrists – the youngest person ever to attempt suicide in the history of New Jersey, he informs her. (Larry's imaginary friends, who also pay a visit, are a rowdy, foul-mouthed sunflower and cactus.)

Haidle seems to suggest that children today have little chance to be children the way they did in the era of A.A. Milne or even Peter, Paul, & Mary. They're exposed to adult attitudes and behavior so early in life that they quickly absorb and adopt adult sensibilities, even in their play. Of course, the way he portrays that here is at a comic extreme; much of the dialogue spouted by these preschoolers is so worldly and sophisticated, so far beyond the speakers' years, as to be cartoonish. And in some ways it recalls a cartoon – specifically, Peanuts. In that classic of the funny pages, Charles Schulz was commenting on postwar American society by having grownup talk literally come out of the mouths of babes, and Haidle is doing much the same thing, albeit with much more raw language, cocaine, and sex toys. It's good ol' Charlie Brown and the gang, as ghost-written by Christopher Durang (who, as it happens, was one of Haidle's playwriting teachers).

The creative team for this Capital T Theatre Company production seems fully aware of the darkness in Haidle's comedy, but they bring to it a brightness that keeps the whole affair surprisingly light. Mark Pickell's living-room set, with its flat, butcher-paper rug and walls outlined in thick, black marks and shaded in pastels, recalls a cheery coloring-book illustration. And Tiny Robinson's Lucy seems just like the kid who colored it in; the actress – who is an adult – plays the child with the exuberance of a kindergartner set free at recess, all giddy, playful energy busting loose. By contrast, Chase Wooldridge's Larry has that perpetually slump-shouldered, hangdog demeanor of Charlie Brown at his Charlie Browniest – and it inspires the same kind of comic sympathy one feels for the Peanuts hero. As the titular imaginary friend, David Bowers shifts skillfully from amiable playmate to manic bully, tempering Marmalade's increasingly outrageous antics with just enough humanity to keep us watching him – and laughing. Noah Neal plays his put-upon assistant, Bradley, with a low-key charm, while the rest of the cast – Annie Dragoo, Matt Hislope, and Ash Bell – supply high-octane support to a variety of characters, real and imaginary.

As miserable as he makes these kids' lives, Haidle offers them a sliver of hope – and through, of all things, dodgeball, that cruelest of playground games. That's what Lucy and Larry go off to play together in the end. As painful a game as it can be, at least it's a game for kids, and two kids are playing it together. Maybe there's still room for children to be children, after all.