Here’s a play that should be really good, based on its reputation alone. Written by Chicago comedy writer Samantha Hurley, I’m Going to Marry You Tobey Maguire premiered off Broadway at The Cell Theater in 2023. Now Refracted Theatre Company has mounted it at The Den Theatre in Chicago, bringing its original off Broadway director Tyler Struble on board. Under Struble’s experienced hands, we get a vital, lively production of a retro piece, circa 2005.
As the title suggests, the play centers on Spider-Man actor Tobey Maguire (Jasper Johnson is just right for the role) who has become the fixation of a precocious and deranged eight-grade girl, Shelby Hinckley (an over-the-top good performance by Alex O’Shea). Hinckley, who leads her local chapter of the Tobey Maguire fan club, plots to capture Maguire, and successfully entraps him in her family basement. There she plans to marry him.
When we meet Shelby Hinckley, she is playing with dolls in an adjacent room, enacting scenes from the romance she imagines with Toby Maquire, who is just coming back to consciousness following a car crash engineered by Hinckley. The crazy premise included stuffing him into an oversized duffle bag. With the help of a friend she has maneuvered him into her basement, then chained him to a pipe. The room is a shrine to Maguire, plastered with posters and magazine images of him.
Lucey Stoole aka Ty Huey (left) and Alex O'shea
As he revives, Maguire imagines this must be some elaborate practical joke his agent has engineered, and begins shouting to him and bargaining for release. But no, Shelby arrives and explains his predicament is her doing. Unseen, Shelby’s Mom (Lucey Stoole aka Ty Huey) shouts barks down the stairs for Shelby to turn down the television, and never comes down to investigate, despite Maguire’s calls for help. Stool - Huey plays multiple roles in an imaginative performance as variously a real estate agent, paparazzi, and Maguire’s alter-ego embodied in a poster of him.
What Shelby hadn’t anticipated is that Maguire, the actual human being, is a cigarette smoker, a drunk and an addict, which is true from real life as well by Maguire's own admissions. Unwilling as he is to marry this 14-year-old girl (she figured he’d succumb to Stockholm Syndrome and fall for her), he resorts to sniffing spray paint fumes as his only available outlet for a high. Maguire is characterized as competing for roles with Jake Gyllenhaal (in real life it was Leonardo DiCaprio that was his competitive frenemy).
The play runs 105 minutes with no intermission, and we witness scenes of psychosis from Shelby and Maguire. The television screen, central to much of the action, transmogrifies artfully at one point and we see Maguire issue forth from it (ala the film Videodrome), a scene carried off well.
But the plot ultimately runs out of steam (Steven King’s like-minded Misery gets a shout-out by Shelby) though the play runs on without it. The charm wore off for me, though all three performers make the best of it and the show elicits plenty of laughs. All in all, it comes somewhat recommended. Refracted Theatre's I’m Going to Marry You Toby Maguire runs through Oct. 31 at The Den Theatre in Chicago.
