Mary Jane NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (175)
See it if You want to see a play that builds beautifully in an artfully calibrated production building quietly to profound emotional resonance.
Don't see it if Issues of child illness are too close at hand. It is a sensitive portrait, but I imagine deeply challenging if the issues are nearby.
See it if You like stark playable about by difficult issues. Fantastic acting. A hyper realistic set. Thought provoking, emotional play.
Don't see it if You want something light and cheerful. This is serious and intense. Deals with difficult issues involving a very sick child.
See it if you want to see a show that really hits you in the emotions. It's a show that will hit hard
Don't see it if watching someone deal with an incredibly difficult situation will be particularly upsetting to you
See it if You want to be challenged, not feel comfortable, and walk out feeling that you’ve just seen something extraordinary.
Don't see it if You have issues with disease, want a laugh riot, or expect big showy performances. They were excellent, but quietly real. Amazingly done.
See it if you want a well written, well acted, well stage story exploring the life of a single mother whose child has disabilities. Really EXCELLENT!
Don't see it if you were looking for Jersey Boys.This play is touching without being maudlin.It is eye opening, very real.Go see it.The actors are terrific
See it if You want a show that has depth in it's simplicity, and has a cast that brings Herzog's beautiful play to life.
Don't see it if You have no tolerance for subjects associated with children with special needs.
See it if Want to see a flawless well written and performed production.
Don't see it if You can't watch a play about cerebral palsy, even though the plot evolved with grace at all times.
See it if you want to see a play that shows how a sick child impacts on the mother and the people around her.
Don't see it if you don't want to see a play about a sick child. Read more
Critic Reviews (42)
"This beautiful new work is directed with ultra-naturalistic subtlety by Anne Kauffman...By virtue of its elegant structure, its expository economy, its gentle humor, fine-grained characterizations and knack for sharp observation cloaked in seemingly casual glimpses of a life, 'Mary Jane' sidesteps the banalities of the medical drama to become something richer...While the entire cast performs with real warmth and feeling, everything is understated and unerringly believable."
Read more
"For a heart-piercing ride-along on the avalanche of emotion engulfing the parent of a desperately ill, incapacitated child, playwright Amy Herzog exceeds her own fine record of accomplishment with 'Mary Jane'...Carrie Coon plays that mother smashingly in New York Theatre Workshop's impeccable production, flawlessly directed by Anne Kauffman...Herzog invests in each of her characters a beguiling sense of authenticity."
Read more
"Mary Jane is played with extraordinary grace by Carrie Coon...Much like her deeply authentic performance, 'Mary Jane' is perhaps the realest play we'll see all year, one that is precise in its details and is delivered with exceptional dignity by director Kauffman...Herzog's delicate script is infused with lines and references that go beyond a writer's everyday understanding of the subject matter...The play tugs at the heartstrings without being manipulative in the way that so many dramas are."
Read more
"To say that there are no dramatic highs and lows in Herzog's touching new drama is by no means a criticism. It's more of a recognition of the beautifully understated naturalism in both the playwright's text and in Kauffman's production...There's a good deal of realistic humor, played a as natural reaction to an impossible situation but, while never directly stated, the play's focus is a damnation of a nation's system of health care."
Read more
"'Mary Jane', a beautiful new play written by Amy Herzog and directed with naturalism by Anne Kauffman, will only burnish Herzog's stature as a writer of subtle introspection and uncanny insight...Herzog has miraculously crafted a piece that is brimming with humor and warmth despite its grim subject matter...A moving play about everyday life you'll think about long after you leave the theater. You'll count yourself lucky that life isn't yours."
Read more
"Thanks to Herzog's gift for listening to people...and the performances of the entire ensemble as subtly directed by Kauffman, there are enough moments to allow some lightness and laughter into this grimly realistic play...It's Mary Jane's continuing overall human caring and curiosity and Herzog's dialogue for those interactions with the people she comes in contact with that make 'Mary Jane' a touching group portrait despite its meandering plotlessness."
Read more
“Though it's built around a dramatic subject, Amy Herzog's new play proves as bland as its title. Under the circumstances, it's hard to decipher Herzog's intentions with ‘Mary Jane,’ which concerns the mother of a prematurely born baby, a baby we never see, even though his presence is felt throughout the play. As surefire as Herzog's ambitions were with her earlier plays ‘4000 Miles' and 'Belleville,’ she seems uncertain about her feelings toward her title character in ‘Mary Jane.’”
Read more
"A luminous Coon strives fearlessly to make 'Mary Jane' work as a drama. And she comes awfully close to succeeding. But she can’t quite manage to give the spirited, often funny, but ultimately directionless play a raison d’être...A character study of a vibrant flesh-and-blood character. But it doesn’t go anywhere new or deep. It’s a huge cut above a disease-of-the-week TV movie in terms of its intelligence and its lack of sentimentality, but at its core it’s not all that different."
Read more