The Department of Theater and Dance's spring semester's mainstage production, Vanishing Marion, directed by Elizabeth Bonjean, Theatre, is a contemporary comic drama that presents the audience with a relatable and relevant look at familial and social dysfunction.
The plot of the play follows Marion's (Gillian Hemme '10) turbulent relationships, both internal and external, in her suburban all-girl's prep school and her purgatorial home life. Whether it is living with the stigma of having a scholarship at her prep school or attempting to find a space to simply exist and express herself, Marion finds little solace at home and, as a response to the pressures around her, has stopped eating.
While Marion's eating disorder represents a motif within the play, the problem isn't central and addresses a larger hunger and emptiness that speaks to the emotional paralysis and frustration of each character, both major and minor.
"I see 'Vanishing' as a verb in the title, not an adjective. I see it as Marion choosing to internalize the things going on around her," Hemme said. "She's going through a lot of things in school and at home, and she can't quite deal with it at all."
Vanishing Marion slides back and forth between the settings of school and home, but the two places share the same stage, compressed into an apt visual representation of Marion's world. Her family includes her devil-may-care twin brother, Brian (Orion Wingfield '10), their aloof mother, Rita (Katherine Jarvis '09), and Leslie (Renee Lynch '08), their high-strung older sister, who recently moved back home after a break-up. All these characters fail to communicate or truly understand each other's grief, stemming from the death of their father ten years earlier.
"The father died ten years ago, and the family never dealt with that," Hemme said. "And the family is stuck in the same place, ten years later, because they can't communicate with each other and can't complete the grieving process."
"[And] because they haven't even begun," Jarvis added.
Vanishing Marion opened on Thursday and runs until Sunday at Flanagan Theater. The show's playwright Jeanmarie Williams will be present after Friday's performance to answer questions.
