Mary Page Marlowe premiered in Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in 2016 and opened Off-Broadway in 2018. American playwright Tracy Letts is probably best known to theatregoers and filmgoers as the author of August Osage County.
The production at The Old Vic is directed by Mathew Warchus in-the-round, which means the auditorium has been completely transformed. This is something, which has not happened since Warchus directed Alan Ayckbourne’s comedy trilogy, The Norman Conquests some 17 years ago.
Letts’s drama is a 90-minute play covering 70 years of the life of an ordinary woman. It is told in 11 scenes in non-chronological order and without interval. Mary is played by five actresses and one doll.
The play is a series of snapshots. Mary married three times. She had two children. She was a bad mother. She was promiscuous. She slept with her boss. She has a drink problem. She was convicted of driving whilst under the influence.
Susan Sarandon is making her West End debut and there will be many people who are going to see the play because she is in it. She is cast as Mary in old age. Audiences who have admired her performances in such films as Thelma and Louise and Dead Man Walking are going to be disappointed to discover how small the role is.
It is Andrea Riseborough, who plays the middle-aged Mary, who has big emotional scenes and more opportunities to make an impact. The scene when her husband tries to stop her from admitting her guilt to a crime and going to jail works well, thanks to the strong support she gets from Paul Thornley.
Lauren Ward is perfect too as Mary’s shrink. The play is well acted and well directed, but the fragments do not add up to a satisfying whole. Letts’s jigsaw portrait of an ordinary woman is left incomplete and interest stalls.
The gimmick of multiple actors playing Mary and the non-linear format is going to leave some audiences struggling to fully understand what is going on or care.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website. 
