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. |
