Daniel J. Giles ’13 shares a pretend playdate with Vanessa B. Koo ’12 in “Mr. Marmalade.”

September 24 - October 2, 7:30 p.m.

Loeb Experimental Theater

Directed by Julianne I. Ross ’11

Produced by Bryce J. Gilfillian ’12

Many children have imaginary friends. But not many children are like four-year-old Lucy, whose strangely inconsistent, cocaine-addicted unreal pal is the titular character of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s first production of the semester, “Mr. Marmalade.”

Lucy is a victim of modern childhood, almost always left alone while her single mother is working long hours. As a result, she develops a strange dependence on her imagined and immoral businessman Mr. Marmalade, who is closely tied to the dark adult issues she faces in the real world. But that relationship is altered when five-year-old Larry becomes her first real friend and she begins to grow into a more normal childhood.

“It’s the idea that she’s bringing all this baggage from her real world into her fantasy world, which is so sad because the place that is supposed to be this sort of free space for a girl and her imagination has become tainted by real life,” director Julianne I. Ross ’11 says.

The play, written less than a decade ago by Noah Haidle, takes a direct yet imaginative look at the psychology of growing up today, embodied in how Lucy deals with loneliness, the influence of the media, false idols, and unsatisfied needs.

“It’s so very immediate to what’s going on in the world right now,” producer Bryce J. Gilfillian ’12 says. “A lot of theater I’ve done at Harvard is thought-provoking and about real issues, but they are veiled in symbolism and metaphor. This play really takes these issues and puts them right in your face.”

Yet despite the difficulties of Lucy’s situation, the cast and crew say the show is an uproariously clever and irreverent portrait of coping with childhood issues.

“Every other line is laugh-out-loud funny,” Ross says. “It’s definitely just a really funny play that happens to be really dark.”

Ultimately, “Mr. Marmalade” uses sometimes-disturbing, sometimes-hilarious fantasy to comment on very real contemporary struggles.

Vanessa B. Koo ’12—who plays Lucy—adds, “We get to see the peculiarities of what happens when someone with such a vivid imagination just expresses her frustration, but I see a lot of what she grapples with as common difficulties.”