Amy Jirsa is an adult playing a child who wants nothing more than to be an adult.
Got that?
It will be clear when you take in Rough Magic Productions’ staging of Noah Haidle’s “Mr. Marmalade,” which opens Thursday at The Loft at The Mill.
Directed by Rough Magic artistic director Jack Carpenter, “Mr. Marmalade” is a dark satire about a precocious, tutu-wearing, 4-year-old named Lucy (Jirsa) and her imaginary friend, Mr. Marmalade (Scott Glen).
When Mr. Marmalade misses his tea-party date (again), Lucy throws him over for the suicidal 5-year-old (Jacob Heger) next door, creating a tangled love triangle replete with food fights and hard partying.
The play is a whirlwind of love, loss and epic dysfunction as well as the shadowy zone between the adult world and the children who must try to make sense of it.
“It’s a dark comedy,” Jirsa said. “I find myself laughing at (Lucy) when I should be worried about her.”
The playwright, a Princeton and Juilliard graduate, is considered a fresh new voice in American theater and is known for his provocative storytelling.
Haidle premiered and created a stir with “Mr. Marmalade” in 2004 at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in San Jose, Calif. The off-Broadway Roundabout Theatre Company produced the piece in November 2005.
In fact, the Roundabout prevented Rough Magic from staging the work in Lincoln earlier.
Former Rough Magic artistic director Gregory Peters secured the rights more than a year ago after reading the script in American Theatre magazine, but the rights were pulled “because New York decided to do it,” Carpenter said.
“We really wanted to do it, so we kept after it,” he said. “We love this play. It’s both very funny and kind of heart-wrenching. You will laugh and then say, ‘Why am I laughing at that?’ ”
Peters, who moved to Chicago, originally cast the 29-year-old Jirsa as Lucy. Carpenter kept her as his lead, asking her to play Lucy more as an adult than a child.
“She wants nothing more than to be an adult, be treated like an adult and have adult relationships,” Carpenter said of “Mr. Marmalade’s” principal character.
Jirsa, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln theater graduate, is excited to tackle the role.
She has been a regular on Lincoln stages since returning to Lincoln from Los Angeles two years ago with Sean Schmeits, her husband and local actor.
But most of Jirsa’s work has been in period pieces such as “Jane Eyre” at the Haymarket Theatre and “On the Verge” and “Measure for Measure” for the Flatwater Shakespeare Company.
“I wanted to do something contemporary,” she said.
“Mr. Marmalade” more than fits the bill. Joining her, Glen and Heger on stage will be Sara Bucy, Ben Tibbels, Mark Romano and Meredith Wachter.
“Lucy is such a great character,” Jirsa said. “The humor is perfect.”
In situations, she said, that are over-the-top real.
“We are trying to play them honestly,” she said.
Reach Jeff Korbelik at 473-7213 or jkorbelik@journalstar.com.