BY ISADORA ZUCKER ’25

Girlhood can be many things: from glittery pom pom pens and DIY posters of your crushes lining the wall to online fan clubs and waiting for the next issue of your favorite magazine to release, the life of a fourteen year old girl in the early 2000’s is a world of glitz and glamor. It can also include kidnapping your 29-year-old celebrity crush and keeping him handcuffed to a pole in your basement. Such is the life of Shelby Hinkley (Andie Alcorn ‘25), the protagonist of recent playwright’s lab I’m Going To Marry You Tobey Maguire, which was performed in the Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater’s Studio A on the 28th and 29th of April and was written by Samantha Hurley. Walking into the performance space, the audience was met with Alcorn enthusiastically dancing around the stage to early 2000’s pop music, passionately writing notes which could presumably be fanfiction about her true love Tobey Maguire, and semi- worshipping a note on her door which had the words “I will marry Tobey” written over and over in sparkly ink. This pre-show in and of itself was a feat of stamina from Alcorn, whose energy and enthusiasm made it feel like a performance in itself. As the show is set around a kidnapping, there were some slightly heavier moments in the piece which will also be discussed in this article. These moment include: kidnapping, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, parental abandonment, domestic abuse, stalking, suicide, and moments of intimacy.

As suggested by the pre-show, this play following the life of Shelby was a hysterical, absurd, and yet touchingly honest portrayal of what feels to be a teenage girl struggling to figure out who she is. It was set in 2004 in the suburban town of Bumfluck, South Dakota, where Shelby had kidnapped none other than Tobey Maguire (Matthew Bukzin ‘28) and chained him to a pole in her basement with the intention of marrying him. Tobey, unaware of the situation, laughed it off until Shelby detailed her impressively intricate kidnapping plot, which included becoming friends with the assistants at Tobey’s dentist’s office in order to kidnap him moments before his scheduled wisdom teeth surgery. As Tobey began to grow increasingly frantic, Shelby only became more insistent, leading to an eventual violent altercation between the two—the first of many heightened moments of violence or intimacy throughout the piece—where Tobey slapped Shelby, resulting in her threatening to tase him while loudly proclaiming that the two of them would be getting married right then and there. However, before the situation escalated any
further, the space erupted in echoing, intrusive thoughts from Shelby, giving the audience more
insight into the difficulties Shelby was facing in her real life outside of her basement fantasyland.
This moment, as well as many other moments of intrusive thoughts and musical interludes, was handled exceptionally well by sound designer Jordan Zickmann ‘26, who was able to encapsulate the way an internalized inner spiral feels exceptionally well through their design. Shelby eventually broke out of her little funk, and then continued to successfully officiate and participate in her own wedding with Tobey Maguire—out of fashion wedding dress and all.

After Shelby’s dream wedding extravaganza, we started to see a bit more of her personal life outside of the basement. Starting with a scathing interaction with Shelby’s somewhat deadbeat mother (Jude Gwak ‘28)—after which one of Shelby’s Tobey Maguire poster’s comes to life (played by Naomi Wagner ‘26) to help console her—then progressing into Shelby delivering a passionate speech to her online Tobey Maguire fan club—of which she is naturally the president—this sequence allowed the audience to see a more day-to-day Shelby. While I would not particularly call her subdued, I would say this more mundane side of Shelby was such an interesting contrast to the slightly unrealistic behavior seen by her in the play prior; again, Alcorn’s acting really shone through here, as some of her higher energy melted away to show the somewhat broken, lost teenage girl underneath.

Once Shelby’s webcam speech wrapped up, the scene shifts back to Tobey, who appears to be going through withdraws from multiple substances simultaneously. He began to hallucinate vulture-esque paparazzi and his nagging manager, all of whom were also played by Wagner, which allows the audience to get a look into his real, non-romanticized life just as we had gotten to do for Shelby.

The lights went down, and when they came back up the Tobey poster was animated once more, but this time it was talking to Tobey and not Shelby. I was extremely impressed by Wagner’s performance at this moment, having switched between three vastly different characters with seeming ease and specificity. Tobey and his poster then shared a comical dialogue, really emphasizing the difference between the real Tobey and his celebrity persona. Just as the poster taunted Tobey about his celebrity rival Jake Gyllenhall, Shelby burst back into her bedroom, which lit up and suddenly appeared to be littered with posters depicting various french monuments and slogans; after all, what else can follow a wedding but a honeymoon? Upon realizing her beloved Tobey is a smoker, Shelbey reluctantly took out a large book titled the ‘Tobey-pedia,’ and updated it, which prompted the two to have their first sort-of-normal
conversation about their favorite movies and the reality of Hollywood life. However, this brief moment of connection was squandered when Shelby realized that Tobey is not only uncircumcised, but also a vegan. She fled, after which the poster subtly gives Tobey an idea as to how he could overcome his withdrawals which he readily takes up: huffing spray paint.

The next time Shelby enters her basement bedroom, she is shown taking a call with a not-so-friendly friend, who essentially friend-dumps her before the middle school dance, despite her promises to get ready with Shelby. Another harsh interaction with her mother followed, which prompted Shelby to turn to her favorite magazine, Cosmopolitan, for advice. At the same time, Tobey awoke from his spray-paint high to find one of Shelby’s books on kidnapping. Just as Shelby found a magazine relationship-test quiz, Tobey discovered a similar Stockholm syndrome quiz in the kidnapping book. They both took the oddly similar quizzes concurrently, the results of which inform Shelby that her relationship is “Just not meant to be,” and that she needed to break up with Tobey. Tobey, however, learned the key defining feature of Stockholm syndrome, and hatched a plan which could lead to his eventual freedom. This plan? Feigning Stockholm syndrome to gain Shelby’s trust. Tobey began enacting this grand scheme by helping Shelby get ready for her middle school dance, artfully placing colorful butterfly clips throughout her hair.

After a brief nightmare in which Tobey found himself needing to ride Jake Gyllenhall like a horse, he was woken up by a distraught, disheveled Shelby returning from her not-so-perfect school dance. Though he tried to be gentle with her, as per his plan, Tobey eventually ended up blowing up at Shelby, an action she returned tenfold as she dramatically broke up with him. Feeling defeated, Tobey resumed his conversation with the poster, who gave him the idea to stage a school dance in the basement to win Shelby back. When Shelby arose once again, she found herself face to face with a woman named Brenda Dee Cankels (Jude Gwak ‘28), a real estate agent who we learn is getting ready to sell Shelby’s house. Though it was hinted at throughout the play, this is the first moment we really see the financial struggle that Shelby and her family were going through, further putting into perspective some of the other stressors that contributed to Shelby’s unstable mental state. Gwak’s portrayal of Ms. Cankles was truly bizarre and hysterical, capturing all of the odd, passive aggressive midwestern energy you would expect out of a South Dakotan real estate agent.

At this point, the show took a sudden shift as Tobey bounded onto the stage in a
spiderman suit and began monologuing to the audience. Free from his handcuffs and breaking
the fourth wall, Tobey started to show a different side of himself, one that was maybe a bit closer
to Shelby’s fantasy. I found Bukzin’s acting particularly compelling during this moment; getting
to see him in a more naturalistic setting provided a very nice contrast to his otherwise
overwhelmed, frantic, and frightened portrayal of Tobey in the rest of the show, demonstrating
his dramatic range nicely. As Tobey addressed the audience, he pointed out one member directly
talking to them and including them in the show. When I saw this show, I just so happened to be
the audience member chosen, and I must say watching Tobey Maguire in a full on spiderman
costume speak about you to a full audience truly is a bizarre, yet oddly tonally on-theme,
experience. I thought this section was an interesting demonstration of some of the underlying
themes of the show, highlighting the power that celebrities—or in this case, actors or people
being given attention—have, and how enticing that can be for someone who doesn’t have that
same power, such as Shelby. Once Tobey finished this monologue and exited the stage, the scene
shifted back to Shelby, as she passionately declares the she and Tobey were going to commit a double suicide. During this scene, I was also particularly struck by the lighting design, done by Liz Gluz ’27; this show was highly dramatized and over the top, yet also was set in a somewhat realistic setting, two aesthetics which are difficult to balance as a designer. The way that Gluz was able to create unique, yet thorough designs for so many different versions of one static space was extremely impressive.

Shelby began to prepare the basement for the suicide, dousing the floor with gasoline
with a lighter in hand, when she suddenly ran into Tobey setting up a mini-school dance in the
basement for her. Starstruck and touched, Shelby approached him, and the two began to slow
dance. The two spoke intimately, romantically talking about weddings and the magic of school
dances until Shelby, overwhelmed by the moment, grabbed Tobey and kissed him. Just as she
pulled back and began to question herself, Tobey pulled her back in and kissed her again. This
moment seemed really sweet, almost overshadowing the weird and illegal-in-many-ways context
of the scene. The kiss convinced Shelby that her love was requited, allowing her to finally uncuff
Tobey. For a brief moment, it almost seems like Tobey really was Stockhom-syndromed, that is
until he decked Shelby and began his grand escape.

In her unconscious state, Shelby dreamed of an argument between her parents years prior,
arguing after her father’s official sentencing to prison due to the fact he stalked and attempted to
kidnap Charlize Theron. While Shelby was trying the whole play to fit in with her peers and get
past the stigmatization she faced due to her father’s very public sentencing, she ended up falling
into the exact same trap of an escapist fantasy that he did. This felt like a metaphor about class
mobility, representing the idea that the system is built in a way to keep poor people poor and rich
people rich, and no matter how hard you try sometimes you can’t escape the fact that the system
is built against you.

Shelby then arose from her bad memory as Tobey angrily ordered her to unlock the
basement so he could get out. Instead, Shelby grabbed her lighter, intending to carry out her
initial double-suicide plan, only to be thwarted by a hackey sack thrown by none other than
Brenda Dee Cankles. Brenda, having discovered the location of the publicly missing Tobey
Maguire, began to walk up the stairs, only to slip and fall to her death. As the remains of
Shelby’s fantasy slowly melt away, she suddenly drinks out of a bucket of paint with the
intention of killing herself. This did not work, and she instead began to throw up. Toby, seeing
the state his captor was in, offers a few words of semi-encouragement, helping her to throw up
the rest of the paint before escaping the basement forever. Shelby, who realized what was about
to happen to her, logs on one last time to her online fan club, making a video explaining that it
was her who kidnapped Tobey Maguire. The show ended with her serenading her fellow fanclub
members to her own special rendition of “Wonderwall”, retitled Tobeywall.

It is hard to fully capture this play in writing, with all of its dynamic twists and truly
unexpected plot moments. Though it has already closed, it is truly difficult to appreciate this
piece without witnessing all the hard work that went into it. The show was truly a marathon,
especially given the 3-week timeline of a Studio Lab, and I truly applaud every person involved
as creating a show like this is truly a behemoth of a task. Particular credit is due to director Katie
Steele ‘26, who was able to successfully create such a specific, stylized aesthetic and direct the
cast of actors through such a massive piece in a short period. I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey
Maguire—with all of its quirkiness, spark, and humor—will surely be a show that will stick with
everyone who saw it for years to come.

Photos by Logan Waugh ’26

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Isadora Zucker ’25 is a Staff Writer for the Skidmore Theater Living Newsletter