Depending where you sit, the hospital bed can be seen from the living room. Today’s immediate crisis involves the plumbing and the building’s Super is working through the commonplace problem. The world of Mary Jane is much like everyone’s but with the added reality of a very ill child who needs round the clock care.
The heartbreak and self-sacrifice of motherhood is a key theme explored in this quietly devastating drama. Nurses are ever present in this home. Mary Jane will interact with four women in the two halves of this play. Each brings perspective from a different point of view. Feelings are explored with gentle compassion. We come to grips with mom’s surprising and impressively sunny demeanor.
Good natured Mary Jane counsels another mom who is just beginning to deal with her own similar circumstance. Ideas learned from caring for her own son are casually tossed off as if a recipe. Our peek into her seemingly unclouded world foreshadows pain ahead.
The riveting center of this beautifully constructed story involves two mothers sitting at a table in the hospital. Susan Pourfar’s Chaya is a Jewish Orthodox woman dealing with her own child’s health issues. These two mothers converse having just met but the intersection illuminates a shared humanity. The scene is breathtaking for its simplicity and its realness.
Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams (Spotlight) plays the title character and she is excellent. There is no hysterical moment for Mary Jane. Life is a slow burn to be managed. Her pain is barely evident underneath the dutiful exterior. A visit from a hospital chaplain will allow her and us to ponder a spiritual view.
Anne Kauffman directed this soft-spoken masterwork in which we eavesdrop on what could have been a movie-of-the-week tale. Instead, unconnected scenes from life unfold and we witness the never ending cycle of a parental burden which overtakes their lives. The pain is understandable and possibly even recognizable. That doesn’t make it hurt less or give undue hopefulness.
In the first scene the Super (Brenda Wehle) remarks that the apartment’s window guards are missing which is illegal. Mary Jane took them off so her son could see outside since he cannot often go there. This play is much like that little side conversation. Playwright Amy Herzog has taken the safety bars down so we can peer into this world without manufactured barriers. The result is a nuanced heartbreaker filled to the brim with both love and sadness.
Performances for Mary Jane are scheduled through June 2, 2024 at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman’s Broadway theater.