Mrs Marvin

Mrs ‘Jackie’ Marvin (Emma Algeri) presents as a type of Head Mistress we recognise or remember.  Bumptious, self-assured, self-important, just a little authoritarian, boasting while humble…  ‘Call me Jackie…’  Jackie tells us that there will be a presentation on ‘leadership in education’ and that announcement is backed by a slick video presentation.  We’re off to a promising satiric start – except that Jackie seems to forget about ‘leadership’ very quickly and instead catalogues a somewhat dubious career up to and including the position of principal of Meadowdale Public School… 

Despite the proud achievement of being a Weight Watchers regional leader, Jackie has tried and more or less failed at many ventures for which there are more or less plausible ‘poor me’, not-my-fault excuses.  Relationships, nepotistic appointments that go wrong, attempts to branch out into alternative careers…  There’s a CD of Jackie’s solo clarinet performances (here there’s some mime to pre-recorded clarinet) – The Wallows of a Widow – but sales have faltered…

Jackie has bravely had a go too at music theatre ventures.  Here Algeri breaks off, leaves the stage and returns in tap shoes to perform a very funny parody (think Celeste Barber) of tap and chorus line moves.  But that bit of fun is short-lived.  It probably has to be because it has no context.  Jackie leaves the stage again and returns in flats for rest of the show.

Much of the show consists of songs – some original, some with repurposed lyrics.  Under the gags and patter we discover that Algeri has a beautiful voice and can really sing (Algeri’s Instagram pages tells us of classical singing training).  This is surprising, but doesn’t really fit with the rest of the act, which presents Jackie as a mediocrity who overestimates her abilities and constantly fails…

If there’s a (tenuous) comparison to be made, it’s Ricky Gervais in the original The Office – a man cringingly devoid of self-awareness, Jackie doesn’t evoke the same response because any cohesion gets lost in the one-thing-after-another mode of things that are in the show for their own sake and not for the show.  Algeri’s opening night audience was loudly loyal, but despite flashes of genuine talent most of the gags and routines feel laboured and fall flat.  As a show, Mrs Marvin is shapeless.  Here is a performer who can cleverly exploit the ‘Jackie’ persona, with obvious varied abilities and a nose for unself-conscious delusions, but who needs a writer or a better collaborator.

Michael Brindley