Peace for Mary Frances NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (114)
See it if you enjoy end of life drama's set in a hospice at home scenario. Lois Smith shines as do Day and Smith-Cameron
Don't see it if you enjoy cohesive even keeled dramas
See it if a fan of Lois Smith or topic of siblings coping with impending loss of parent (in talk-back, audience hailed relatability to own experience)
Don't see it if averse to scenarios of immature, unlikable adult siblings engaged in unhealthy, stagnant dynamic that drags; hospice; enigmatic matriarch.
See it if dysfunctional family and dying mother, some funny & some touching moments; with aging population issues of end-of-life care are important
Don't see it if very, very slow; many characters with many issues - too much going on; actors good but characters not really developed Read more
See it if You are a Lois Smith fan.
Don't see it if It is a too long bout of bickering family members waiting for Mary Frances to die. Not for you if you recently faced that situation.
See it if You'll see anything with Lois Smith
Don't see it if You need a tight, fast moving script Read more
See it if A fan of Lois Smith & ensemble directed by Neugebauer. Overly long realistic,play of a dying woman and dysfunctional family.
Don't see it if If you perfer light dramas. Not for the faint of heart or those who had a recent experience with death of a loved one and hospice .
See it if A superlative cast led by Smith cannot resuscitate this DOA drama Lacks a strong dramatic arc & is often repetitious Colorless direction
Don't see it if Despite such potent topics as end of life hospice & unresolved middle-age sibling rivalry, drama is over long, unshaped & grows tedious
See it if you love wonderful Lois Smith enough to sit through a banal, endless play, with some other good actors, esp. J. Smith Cameron
Don't see it if you have anything else to do with (almost) three hours of your life. Read more
Critic Reviews (33)
"Perhaps the main way 'Peace for Mary' distinguishes itself is its resolute lack of character growth, bridges mended, open conversations, and the other usual tropes...I am not someone who demands happy endings. But if you're going to ask me to sit through a grueling two hours and forty-five minutes, you've got to give me something. A hint of growth...Reasonably well-written, and the cast is quite good."
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"Thorne’s painful and beautiful play...Neugebauer keeps the plot turns moving with delicacy and nuance. And it’s mesmerizing...The work seems at peace with allowing characters to tell their stories step by step, word by word...This new play is both heartbreaking and hopeful, presenting a stage of life that’s too long and not long enough. We’re all just doing the best we can."
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"Smith feels completely natural in her discomfort, and her need for finality...Neugebauer mines the emotional depth of these characters, and their relationships...Smith-Cameron is a force of nature, her mere presence radiating a sense of truth, of being in the present...As her crazy sister Fanny, Johanna Day plays a recovering addict who is also manipulative, in an unpredictable, and unsettling way...About the end of life, Lily Throne’s play is unsentimental. And death is relief."
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"A labored play that attempts to do too much with too many characters, ending up far less than the sum of its parts...Although Thorne is sympathetic to her characters, she writes too many melodramatic, even sitcomish confrontations for them...The family’s conflicts are contrived and often risible...Amid such messiness, director Lila Neugebauer has difficulty getting the play to cohere dramatically, comically and emotionally."
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“This play, which lacks structure and has characters walking from room to room like robots, is directed by the usually very reliable Neugebauer. But she can add nothing to this, with thoroughly disagreeable characters in a lumbering slice of life drama...Despite some committed performances, it is a completely dismal play with characters that are either objectionable or just plain bores complete with dialogue that sinks into the mundane.”
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"Lois Smith is giving one of the most challenging and dynamic performances I've ever seen from an older actor...It is a nuanced and often witty characterization that is well worth sitting through the show. The show itself is less of a marvel, but it contains stellar performances and is often a queasily accurate depiction of how many of us die...The play is imperfect — it is overlong, it sometimes feels tonally akimbo, and it has a remarkably unsatisfying ending — but there is a lot of truth on that stage."
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"Lily Thorne’s ambitious script is very detailed in its depiction of hospice care—almost a documentary about how the American healthcare system handles death. But when the focus shifts to the relationships among the different family members, the play seems to come to life...Thorne manages to find a surprising amount of laughs in the midst of the morbidity, and director Lila Neugebauer keeps the pace from flagging too much."
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"Played to perfection by Lois Smith, Mary Frances is willful, loving, selfish, tender, peevish, witty, brutal and all else that make mysteries of our mothers...Neugebauer keeps the pace ebbing and flowing as needed, and the cast’s solid performances are a testament to her work with the actors in developing their characters...One is left wishing that the play’s ending had started the second half so the love/hate relationship that torments the sisters could be resolved."
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