MARY JANE
MARY JANE, Mi Todo Productions at the Old Fitz, 23 May-15 June 2025. Photography by Phil Erbacher: above - Di Adams and Eloise Snape; below - Janine Watson and Snape’ below again - Watson, Snape, and Sophie Bloom, lit by
Amy Herzog’s 2017 play Mary Jane is utterly riveting while being almost entirely without conventional theatrical conflict, aggression, or drama. Mary Jane (Eloise Snape) is a single mother, living in a small apartment in Queens, whose young son Alex was not only born with cerebral palsy but is also seriously ill with pneumonia. He has a paralysed vocal cord and is non-verbal. Mary Jane’s job gives her vital health insurance for him, but the job is in jeopardy as she has taken so much time off. She is also coping with the American healthcare system.
This undoubtedly sounds bleak and uninviting, but it’s not. It is not. In an interview, a year ago in the New Yorker, Herzog said of the play that she wanted audiences to see it the way her director, Annie Kauffman, did. (Kauffman directed the first, off-Broadway production as well as the subsequent Broadway success.) “My director always says: Mary Jane’s life is fine, but she’s just … she’s on Mars. So, everybody, come to Mars. And just accept that it’s Mars.”
On a mightily clever set lit by Izzy Morrissey and Luna Ng and designed by Soham Apte that starts out as Mary Jane’s kitchen-living room and turns into a hospital waiting room, the events of Mary Jane’s life unfold. First, the building’s taciturn super, Ruthie (Di Adams), arrives with a plunger to fix the blocked kitchen sink. It remains blocked, comically; Mary Jane remains sunny. Later, the indefatigable, briskly caring, home nurse Sherry (Janine Watson) comes to do her scheduled bit, and daily life on Mars rattles along.
As Mary Jane’s inner buoyancy keeps her and those around her afloat, the other actors each take a different role in the second half. Di Adams swaps her plunger and grumpiness for the robes and serenity of a late-onset Buddhist nun/hospital chaplain. Janine Watson dons scrubs and objectivity for a brisk paediatrician. (Costume designer Rita Naidu comfortably places each woman in her clothes.) In the first half, Brianne, Sophie Bloom’s young mother with a disabled child, earnestly writes in a notebook every word of advice Mary Jane offers. In the second act, Bloom is transformed into an orthodox Jewish mother of seven, sharing the waiting room, vigil, and deep understanding of their situation.
When baby Alex has a seizure while Sherry’s niece Amelia (Isabel Burton) is along for the ride, she stands in for Everyperson in her shock and panic, and is barely able to call 911 or know what to say. In the second act, she is the overworked but pragmatic and patient music therapist who faces Mary Jane’s overdue meltdown with equanimity and an unexpected and beautiful song.
Herzog’s play is deeply affecting in its clear-eyed portrayal of what it’s like to love your child when everyone else privately thinks your life is hell. As her own daughter was also incurably afflicted and died at 11 years old, Herzog is not making this shit up, so when it’s funny – as it frequently is – it’s really funny. When she draws characters of the women around her, they are three-dimensional and rich and, as played by each actor, wonderfully stirring.
Director Rachel Chant has approached the play and the company with intelligent, pragmatic tenderness. She gives each character room to be and to breathe, even as they bob about in the sunshine of Mary Jane’s humour, compassion, and resilience. There is not one teaspoon of sentimentality, not one cheap grab for a heartstring, or a laugh; not a foot wrong, nor a moment wasted. Mary Jane is a remarkable play, and this is a remarkable production of it. I did cry. I did laugh, and I now understand better how humanity and compassion can save us, no matter what.
