Monthly Archives: October 2017

Mary Jane Has Soul

I hate plays and films about people with incurable diseases. There is only one narrative trajectory they can possibly have. The protagonist has little agency and is often a victim. The messages of such productions is often maudlin or saccharine or a combination of the two. They are designed to make you cry etc. I say all of this just to demonstrate what Mary Jane had to work against with me as audience- member. That I not only liked it but thought it was an incredibly compelling piece of theatre indicates the achievement of the playwright, director, and actors. It is a great play and production. And, yes, it did make me cry (a little).

First, playwright Amy Herzog wisely focuses her attention not on the patient (a never-seen three-year-old child) but on his primary caregiver. the titular Mary Jane. Second, Herzog dramatizes the struggles Mary Jane has both concerning the care of the child but also issues surrounding that care (trying to maintain a job, navigating the bureaucracies of the medical establishment and the city). Finally, the playwright carefully deconstructs how this loving, smart, and competent woman is slowly overwhelmed with the enormity of the task ahead of her. She never whines nor laments. She keeps trying to maintain her resilience and, yes, her cheerful disposition, but that slowly breaks down (as her son moves from home care to the ICU).

In this, Herzog has found a gifted collaborator in director Anne Kauffman, who maintains a laser-like focus on the journey of Mary Jane. While we feel her travails throughout, she is never a victim. She always maintains some small agency.

And, of course, the play rests on the shoulders of its incredible cast. Carrie Coon, who was the best thing in the might Leftovers cast, invests her portrayal of Mary Jane with subtlety and nuance throughout. Exhausted but never defeated, she fully expresses the brutal struggles of her character and yet we never sense anything less than full love for her son. She is ably supported by an all-female ensemble. Liza Colon-Zayas embodies two medical professionals who are grounded and dedicated, supportive and realistic. The deep subtext of Colon-Zayas conversation with Coons in the hospital is streaked through with both hope and fatalism. Equally poignant is Susan Pourfar as another mother, Chaya (from the Orthodox Jewish community), who has a child with similar disabilities. It is a fascinating scene where Mary Jane discover what they share and what is distinct for each of them. Actresses for years on end will be employing this scene in their workshop classes. Finally, Brenda Wehle as a Buddhist nun shares the stage with Coons for the play’s elegiac conclusion. Herzog quietly but persistently has crafted a story of faith and inquiry, wondering aloud about our place in the world and the purpose behind our bonds to another. That she never telegraphs her inquiry but we realize slowly that this is what we as the audience are being asked to contemplate is a masterful turn of writing.

If it may be said that a work of art has a soul, then this is such a work. Mary Jane only has a few more performances. Catch it while you can.

Only Vaunting Ambition

Given the preponderance of Shakespeare productions in major playhouses on both sides of Atlantic (and the presentation of those as special events at the cinema) as well as film adaptations of the canon – all of which have the resources to engage in world-building – it is left to the smaller theatre companies to focus on the internal lives of the characters. This is a fine and worthy mission indeed,  and that is the course taken by Hudson Theater Works with its production of Macbeth at the Woodrow Wilson School in Weehawken.

The play needs no introduction here. One of its most powerful themes – that of overweening ambition – has markedly modern resonance, especially close to a metropolitan center where fortunes and political careers are built upon such ambition. Though the play is set in a dark age of Scotland when Christianity’s hold on the population is far from a sure thing, where the appearances of witches is far from surprising, and power comes from the sword rather than law and tradition, director Frank Licato’s concerns are on the contemporary moment. Times and technology may change, but  ambition is still the destroyer.

Kevin Cristaldi and Daniela Mastropietro as Macbeth and his Lady embrace the complexity, offering up nuanced Shakespearean performances while still channeling a more modern vision of the roles. They first appear as that accomplished, tasteful, and, above all, nice professional couple. Yet, when opportunity presents itself, they abandon all morals and ethics and pursue their ambitions to the detriment of all, including themselves. The yuppie veneer of respectability is just that – they are hollow to the core. Cristaldi’s Macbeth whispers rather than bellows (think Pacino’s turn as the corporatized mobster in the second Godfather); his weapons is less a bludgeon and more a scalpel. His existential exhaustion come Act V is a refreshing and right choice. Mastropietro too reveals how Lady Macbeth is surprised (but not nearly enough) as she takes each harrowing step away from humanity into her own lust for power. When she realizes at the end of Act I that she would have murdered her own baby to satisfy her own bleak desires, she takes away everyone’s breath, including her own.

Brendan Walsh and Peter Collier as MacDuff and Malcolm make worthy adversaries. Shakespeare works not in binary oppositions but in trinary oppositions. Think Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras. Often Malcolm gets lost in the crush between Macbeth’s murderous rampages and MacDuff’s need for violent retribution. But important in there too is Malcolm, and Licato wisely refrains from cutting their scene in England when they plot Macbeth’s overthrow (and MacDuff learns of the loss of his family). As played, these two men do not necessarily like each other all that much, but they form an alliance anyway to destroy a shared enemy. Collier in particular crafts a tougher-than-usual Malcolm, informed from his experience playing Henry V. The troubles that afflict Scotland will not end with Macbeth’s death. It will be difficult for either men to defeat the other, and the civil wars will continue. Licato emphasizes that cycle of violence with the return of the witches who repeat the opening lines of the play.

For a Macbeth that is very much part of our world, check out Hudson Theater Works production.

Details can be found here: http://www.hudsontheatreworks.com