We round up the reviews for this UK premiere of Samantha Hurley‘s play, which is playing in London until the 10th August.
WhatsOnStage: *** “It seems like Hurley can’t decide if this is a comedy or a thriller, or a comic thriller, or a thriller turned comic, or a comedy turned thriller – and so on. There’s enough meat on the idea for it to be both, but it doesn’t need to keep flip-flopping between, and it needs a solid half-hour shaved off. An excellent premise all the same, with thankfully a lot of room for the brilliantly absurd. It’s Never Been Kissed meets Misery.”
Theatre & Tonic: ***** “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.”
All That Dazzles: **** “I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire takes obsessive teen culture and turns it sinister – almost a Misery but make it Y2K. And this theme is very well executed, from the set design complete with furbies and bubble-gum pink CD players to the costume design (Reuben Speed) of bright bangles and butterfly clips. Like Misery, it is pretty dark, with heavy themes of addiction, mental health and abuse, and yet humour undercuts this heaviness and tension throughout.”
London Theatre.co.uk: ** “The show was rapturously received by the opening night audience and it would have been lovely to have been similarly charmed or at least to have submitted to Stockholm Syndrome, but, really, it was a relief to leave the madhouse.”
The Stage: *** “Zany farce from US playwright Samantha Hurley takes the oddball-teen trope to dark places.”
Theatre Cat: “The play runs solid at 110 minutes, and could well be trimmed: but New York loved it, the players are remarkably good and Tyler Struble’s direction fluent and full of small surprises. The conversations, conflicts and doubts both sides are often very funny, but its merit is in allowing pathos and a rounded, stroppy sense of emerging character to Shelby : neglected fatherless child of a QVC-addicted mother, bullied at her school and its Prom. There’s subtlety too in a wonderful performance by Hayward as her captive.”
North West End UK: **** “If you’re in the mood for a wild, hilarious ride filled with moments that will have you laughing until you can’t breathe, ‘I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire’ is the performance to see. It’s a delightful blend of nostalgia, comedy, and outrageous antics that will leave you reminiscing about your own teenage years and celebrity crushes.”
Broadway World: *** “Despite being fully scripted, the show has a distinctly improvised feel about it, owing in part to its slow, meandering pace and many interludes and tangents. A lot of the time it’s not really clear what exactly is happening – sometimes this is part of the fun, but it can also get more than a little confusing. As the show goes on, it does feel like it loses the plot, in both senses of the phrase.”
The Reviews Hub: **** “In the play, much is made of Stockholm Syndrome, the theory that captives end up falling in love with their captors. While professional psychologists dispute whether such a syndrome exists, one thing is for sure: if the madcap, bizarre humour of Samantha Hurley’s I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire is for you, there is a good chance of falling for this twisted, fractured, damaged life of a teenage kidnapper.”
Theatre Weekly: **** “Samantha Hurley, the writer of this wacky play, clearly did her research on Spider-Man. Although it’s a witty and comedic piece of theatre, a lot of the jokes would be lost on audience members who were not familiar with the film series or the actor himself. However, audience members found humour in the elaborate characters and the twisted nature of the storyline, which got weirder and wackier even when thinking it was not possible.”
To book tickets visit: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/im-gonna-marry-you-tobey-maguire/