Wednesday, May 1, 2024

'Mary Jane' Broadway Review: Rachel McAdams is Solid In Gripping Play

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While some relish the tasks of caretaking, others speak candidly about the hardships of child-rearing, sharing the true realities of motherhood that have been glamorized over time. In “Mary Jane,” the 2017 play written by Amy Herzog and making its Broadway debut under Anne Kauffman’s direction, viewers witness both a young mother’s joy and her anguish as she works around the clock to keep her disabled toddler alive. A teenager leads a double life as a high-school student and an assistant to a fashion executive. The first half of the play takes place in Mary Jane’s Queens apartment, which is small, bright and lightly cluttered and which levitates to reveal a sterile, eerily white hospital set for the second half.

Jane by Design — Season 1, Episode 1

It’s a tricky system to capture in a tight play with a five-person cast and sparse, economical staging at the Samuel J Friedman Theatre, but it’s one this Broadway edition, directed by Anne Kauffman, manages to wrangle through the nucleus of Mary Jane. She’s the center of a network of women who help care for Alex, from contracted at-home nurses to emergency room doctors to supportive parents of fellow chronically ill children. It’s McAdams’s Broadway debut, and though she started the play, in my viewing, a bit jittery and unnaturally rhythmic, she soon settled into her role as the linchpin in this young’s boy curtailed life with magnetic ease.

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Jane By Design

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“Mary Jane” stays with viewers long after they leave the theater. It raises worthy questions concerning motherhood, sacrifice, community and lack thereof. It’s a story about how much one person — in this case, one woman — should be expected to endure before bowing under the pressure.

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Jane Quimby, (Erica Dasher) is a teenager, mistaken for an adult, who lands her fashion dream job. She has her best friend Billy (Nick Roux) help her out, although he had a relationship with Lulu (Meagan Tandy), a girl who has been mean to Jane since the seventh grade. Now Billy dates the new girl, Zoe, which makes Jane feel like he's replacing her.

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Hard to think of another play that understands so well. Fans have been so disappointed over the cancellation, they even began a petition on Change.org to collect enough signatures to convince CBS to save the show. They also encouraged their fellow viewers to begin sharing tweets with the hashtag #SaveNCISHawaii.

‘Mary Jane’ Review: Rachel McAdams Makes a Solid Broadway Debut Depicting the Sacrifice of Motherhood

Mary Jane is a personal assistant who is struggling to care for her child and keep her job and McAdams has a cheery, round face and infectious smile. The power of the performance lies in McAdams’ ability to deglamorize herself without letting that undermine the formidable, everyday optimism of this character. How could all of this happen to her, you keep thinking, letting the play send your mind spinning as to what life for Mary Jane would have been like without this challenge. Medical dramas are very difficult to stage in a live theater for all kinds of reasons.

“Mary Jane,” which stars the excellent Rachel McAdams in the title role and was first seen at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2017, is a closely observed play, reflective of the same attention to detail that its title character showers on her child, who has cerebral palsy. The play, to be clear, is not about the kid (who we never fully see), but about his mom and her experience caring first for her child at home and then in the hospital. The writer draws from her own experience with a sick child and as you watch this journey you constantly think to yourself that Herzog must have had that very conversation. They’re all too visceral to have been made from whole cloth. Lachey’s post come on the heels of multiple fans, cast and crew expressing their sadness and frustration over the news. Her co-stars Tori Anderson and Jason Antoon were among those reacting to the news.

From high school to high fashion.

Our team of journalists delivers the latest news for movies and TV shows. Here you will find an overview of the cast & crew of the Jane by Design series from the year 2012, including all actors, actresses and the director. When you click on the name of an actor, actress or director from the Jane by Design series, you can view more films and/or series by him or her. The most powerful of these scenes involves a conversation with a doctor, played with clinical acuity by April Matthis. The subtext of the scene is that the doctor, leaving room for hope, is gently trying to get the mother to realize the bleakness of her child’s prospects and thus better weigh the risks and benefits. Herzog’s skill as a writer means that you feel the conversation alongside McAdams’ character, you are alongside her on a journey no one wants to take.

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This is so stupid this makes me wanna punch a million holes in whoever cancelled the shows wall. The Whitemarsh school play is quickly approaching and Jane must scramble to repair the costumes that have been destroyed at the house party she threw with Billy. The play is also having major financial problems so Jane decides to save the day. She uses her bonus check for the play and claims that it came from Donovan Decker instead of her.

Alex can’t, actually, vocalize anything – he was born with a paralyzed vocal cord, his endearingly peppy mother explains, along with other health conditions such as cerebral palsy, requiring round-the-clock care. We hear his machine’s beeps and whirs, see his mountain of stuffed animals on a hospital bed, jolt and hurdle along his journey from medical hiccup to crisis. And yet, as Mary Jane – the titular mother so movingly, hauntingly embodied by Rachel McAdams – insists, he can understand her. As the 95-minute show progresses, the audience becomes oriented on Mary Jane’s world and gets up to speed on her son Alex’s condition. Mary Jane’s daily schedule revolves around medications, machines, timers and very little sleep. Alex has been assigned a fleet of night nurses, but Sherry (April Matthis), who has worked with the mother and son for the past year, is the most consistent and dependable.

Performances are solid throughout, though McAdams’ projection was muted at a recent performance. Still, it’s the story that truly drives “Mary Jane.” More often than not, the labor of child rearing lies heavily on the mother, who is frequently the primary parent, whether partnered or otherwise. As a single mom caring for a special needs child, the weight of Mary Jane’s existence and her adoration and love for her son are the anchors fortifying this narrative. By the time the final curtain on “Mary Jane” drops, the audience is fully immersed in the titular character’s experiences. McAdams masters her portrayal of a determined caregiver continually sitting in the uncertainty of worry, despite constantly leaning toward positivity.

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