I saw Tracy Letts' August: Osage County towards the end of its run, and I sat at the Music Box theater completely engrossed, hanging on every word. It was truly edge of your seat theater, and it's still one of my favorite theater-going experiences of all time.
And then Letts played George in the magnificent revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, another one of my favorite theater-going experiences, with a performance that remains one of my all-time favorites. After reading/seeing some of his other plays, seeing him act on screen, I was pretty much convinced that the man is a god.
So imagine my excitement when Second Stage announced they were transferring Mary Page Marlowe from Steppenwolf.
Sometimes your heroes let you down.
Look, Letts hasn't let me down completely. The writing of Mary Page Marlowe is still incredibly strong, and it was refreshing to see a play that wasn't trying to be the most topical and timely play in all the land. It's just about story-telling. But...does the story-telling work as well as it should? No, I am not sure it does.
I just left the theater wondering what Letts' point was. We see the titular character, played by six different girls and women, from basically birth to death, as she navigates what she wants from life, marriages, children, tragedy, and illness. The scenes are are chronologically out of order, which creates a fun mystery that we as the audience gets to solve (or try to.) But I felt like there were way too much details missing. At 19, Mary Page proclaims that she's never going to get married, that she's too independent. At 26, she's married with a baby but sleeping with her married, older boss. At 37, while at the therapist's office, she now has two kids but is still carrying on with extramarital affairs; the sex is just about control and power and guilt. The 19 year old version is headstrong, idealistic. What led her to an unhappy marriage? Sure, I buy that people change, and at 19 nobody knows what they really want but I need some blanks filled in. I don't need Letts to spoon-feed us every tiny detail about this woman's life but I couldn't help but feel like these women and girls (and one doll!) who are supposed to be portraying the same woman are in fact playing different people. (This is not a crack at the acting or directing. They're both incredibly strong.) Her father left her and her mother when she was younger, she had three terrible marriages, two kids (one of which presumably ends up dead, it's implied), a drinking problem, and did some time for nearly killing someone while driving while heavily intoxicated. Perhaps that's all there is to know. That's all we need to know.
But does it make for compelling theater? I don't think so. Why should I care about this woman? And I think I could if I understood more about her. I can certainly buy the idea that she was pressured into marrying due to social norms of the time (this is just something I'm inferring) and that she couldn't handle living a life that she didn't want. But then...how did she become an alcoholic? How did she lose control of her life in such a way? (Also, with a cast of 18 actors who do not double up roles, why don't we ever see Sonny, Mary Page's first husband and the father of her children?)
So, what are we supposed to get out of Mary Page Marlowe? Is the point that we're not supposed to know how these things happened to this woman? It doesn't work for me. It's just too thin and shallow. There's great material, and Letts is talented enough to really mine it and write a compelling play. The conceit and structure are great but I need more story. It doesn't even work as a character study. I need a better understanding of Mary Page Marlowe as a woman. The final scene, where Mary Page is in her sixties, shows a woman who is oddly content with her life at that moment. But why? There's nothing that happens in the 90 minutes prior that shows me she's learned anything or has accepted her fate. It's almost disappointingly cliche.
And then Letts played George in the magnificent revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, another one of my favorite theater-going experiences, with a performance that remains one of my all-time favorites. After reading/seeing some of his other plays, seeing him act on screen, I was pretty much convinced that the man is a god.
So imagine my excitement when Second Stage announced they were transferring Mary Page Marlowe from Steppenwolf.
Sometimes your heroes let you down.
Look, Letts hasn't let me down completely. The writing of Mary Page Marlowe is still incredibly strong, and it was refreshing to see a play that wasn't trying to be the most topical and timely play in all the land. It's just about story-telling. But...does the story-telling work as well as it should? No, I am not sure it does.
I just left the theater wondering what Letts' point was. We see the titular character, played by six different girls and women, from basically birth to death, as she navigates what she wants from life, marriages, children, tragedy, and illness. The scenes are are chronologically out of order, which creates a fun mystery that we as the audience gets to solve (or try to.) But I felt like there were way too much details missing. At 19, Mary Page proclaims that she's never going to get married, that she's too independent. At 26, she's married with a baby but sleeping with her married, older boss. At 37, while at the therapist's office, she now has two kids but is still carrying on with extramarital affairs; the sex is just about control and power and guilt. The 19 year old version is headstrong, idealistic. What led her to an unhappy marriage? Sure, I buy that people change, and at 19 nobody knows what they really want but I need some blanks filled in. I don't need Letts to spoon-feed us every tiny detail about this woman's life but I couldn't help but feel like these women and girls (and one doll!) who are supposed to be portraying the same woman are in fact playing different people. (This is not a crack at the acting or directing. They're both incredibly strong.) Her father left her and her mother when she was younger, she had three terrible marriages, two kids (one of which presumably ends up dead, it's implied), a drinking problem, and did some time for nearly killing someone while driving while heavily intoxicated. Perhaps that's all there is to know. That's all we need to know.
But does it make for compelling theater? I don't think so. Why should I care about this woman? And I think I could if I understood more about her. I can certainly buy the idea that she was pressured into marrying due to social norms of the time (this is just something I'm inferring) and that she couldn't handle living a life that she didn't want. But then...how did she become an alcoholic? How did she lose control of her life in such a way? (Also, with a cast of 18 actors who do not double up roles, why don't we ever see Sonny, Mary Page's first husband and the father of her children?)
So, what are we supposed to get out of Mary Page Marlowe? Is the point that we're not supposed to know how these things happened to this woman? It doesn't work for me. It's just too thin and shallow. There's great material, and Letts is talented enough to really mine it and write a compelling play. The conceit and structure are great but I need more story. It doesn't even work as a character study. I need a better understanding of Mary Page Marlowe as a woman. The final scene, where Mary Page is in her sixties, shows a woman who is oddly content with her life at that moment. But why? There's nothing that happens in the 90 minutes prior that shows me she's learned anything or has accepted her fate. It's almost disappointingly cliche.
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