‘Mary Jane’ explores caregiving and connection in new Bridge Street Theatre production
Jeffrey Borak
Jeffrey Borak is The Eagle’s theater critic.
Link to the original article HERE.
Roxanne Fay, left, as Tenkei, and Amy Crossman, right,
as Mary Jane, in Bridge Street Theatre’s “Mary Jane.”
CATSKILL, N.Y. — The title character in Amy Herzog’s play, “Mary Jane,” is a middle school math teacher wannabe who works as the administrative assistant to a New York real estate developer.
Amy Crossman, who plays Mary Jane in Bridge Street Theatre’s production, May 22 through June 1, describes her “as a mother and caretaker who is very wrapped up in her child,” Alex, a severely disabled 2 1/2-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, seizure disorder and lung disease. Born at 25 weeks and four days, he can’t make a sound because, Mary Jane explains, “one of his vocal cords is paralyzed.”
The 90-minutes-plus play chronicles Mary Jane’s determined efforts to care and advocate for her son’s well-being as she finds, in the process, a community of understanding women — the pediatric critical care physician in charge of Alex’s treatment; a visiting night nurse who becomes as much a friend to Mary Jane as she is a professional caretaker; the nurse’s college student niece; the superintendent of Mary Jane’s Queens, N.Y., apartment building; a Hasidic mother of seven; a Buddhist nun and a music therapist.
“[Mary Jane] finds moments of bonding; of sisterhood,” Crossman said.
As a single mother, the pressures on Mary Jane are enervating.
“When things go south for her, there is no place for her to go but up. She is searching for meaning,” Crossman said during an interview at Bridge Street Theatre, at which she was joined by the production’s director, Zoya Kachadurian, and John Sowle, Bridge Street Theatre’s co-founder and artistic director.
“It is so easy to lose one’s sense of self in caregiving,” Kachadurian added.
Sowle describes “Mary Jane” as “a beautiful play; very compelling.”
He and Bridge Street co-founder Steven Patterson have been trying to get the rights to produce “Mary Jane” from the moment they heard about the play after its Off-Broadway opening in September 2017 at New York Theatre Workshop. Drawn from Herzog’s own experience, “Mary Jane” had its world premiere in the spring of 2017 at Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, which commissioned the piece.
“We are always looking for plays by and about women,” Sowle said. “We got the script and felt right away that this is very powerful; something we wanted to do here.”
“Mary Jane” had been scheduled to move to Broadway after its Off-Broadway run, but COVID intervened. As a result, it wasn’t until April 2024 that “Mary Jane” made its Broadway bow in a limited run at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
Neither Crossman nor Kachadurian are strangers to Bridge Street. Crossman appeared at last year’s SoloFest. Patterson has known Kachadurian over the years primarily as a stage manager.
“I had some trepidation about doing this play,” Kachadurian said. “I had just come off directing a play about a woman with Alzheimer’s.”
The fact that “Mary Jane” is intended to be performed by five women, four of whom (in this production, Roxanne Fay, Marianne Matthews, Clarissa Hernandez, and Renee Hewitt) play double roles, “creates a safe space in the rehearsal room, especially when the subject matter is edgy. [For each of us,] the process of putting this together is a meditation.”
Crossman, Kachadurian and Sowle believe the seeming weight of the play’s storyline is leavened with generous amounts of lightness; humor; hope as Mary Jane embarks on a journey of discovery — discovering who she is; “how she fills the empty space in her life,” Crossman said, “if, in fact, she fills that space.
“[In its way,] in the end, this is a funny, tremendously hopeful play.”