Threaded Order Chronological Order
| Too many Marys on stage? | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 09:21 am EDT 07/07/17 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 09:21 am EDT 07/07/17 | |
| In reply to: re: Letts' "Mary Page Marlow" to 2nd Stage next June (2018); Lila Neugebauer directs - AC126748 08:32 am EDT 07/07/17 | |
|
|
|
| To briefly revisit my point about reading, rather than seeing, the play: You were given the theatrical conceit -- this woman is played by a handful of different actors. You have to make constant adjustments, scene by scene, as you move through her narrative. In addition to figuring out where we are in the story, you have to settle in with a new human being embodying the character. Readers have the advantage of coming into the story more like immersion in a novel. We see the "same" Mary in every scene. We aren't jarred because she's always our leading character -- the one in our head. Your points strike me as spot on about the play's possibly biggest weakness: that use of (too) many Marys. |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Too many Marys on stage? | |
| Posted by: AC126748 09:31 am EDT 07/07/17 | |
| In reply to: Too many Marys on stage? - Delvino 09:21 am EDT 07/07/17 | |
|
|
|
| Potential spoiler? I wasn't even really bothered by the use of multiple actors (most were top-notch), or the non-chronology of the script. My main issue was that I felt, at the end of this brief play, that I still didn't know this woman. Didn't know what made her tick. Didn't know what caused her to so often lean into self-destruction. And definitely didn't get enough of a picture of her sober, post-incarceration life, which we are led to believe was a happy one: finally some equilibrium, a good marriage, etc. We don't really get to know the other characters at all, but that didn't even bother me as much--they are clearly meant to be seen as minor characters in Mary's story, whether she's married to them, mother to them, lover to them, etc. But I still couldn't help feeling there was a rather large void in my understanding of who Mary was. I've perhaps been a bit hard on Coon's performance--she plays Mary at her most complicated and self-destructive, and in Chicago, I didn't feel she got anywhere near the levels of emotional depth that those scenes required. But maybe the fault is as much or more in the writing as in her performance. That's probably why I'm hoping there will be some revision to the Second Stage production. |
|
| reply to this message |
Time to render: 0.008836 seconds.