Review: ‘Mary Jane’ powerfully critiques a health care system that is flawed to the bone
Amy Herzog’s harrowing, heartwarming and gut-wrenching “Mary Jane” premiered nearly a decade ago. Its exploration of a profoundly broken health care system and a single mom trying to navigate its Kafka-esque hellscape still resonates with alarming insistence.
Running through Feb. 22 at Skokie’s Northlight Theatre, Herzog’s 95-minute drama is simultaneously bleak and uplifting. The former is embedded in the devastating financial, emotional and physical toll the titular mother pays in order to keep her profoundly disabled son alive. The latter blooms from her abject refusal to succumb to despair and the small community that she leans on to survive.
Director Georgette Verdin shapes Herzog’s minimalist, (mostly) two-person scenes into an elegant, indelible portrait of unsung, Sisyphean heroics. Mary Jane’s life is an endless uphill climb. She gave up a teaching career to care for her son. Her student loan bills pile up regardless, alongside the medical bills. She’s barely hanging on to a menial secretarial job that provides her crucial insurance coverage. Still, she’s defined not by despair but by ferocious maternal love and pragmatic, stalwart optimism. Crucially, Mary Jane is anchored by a small but mighty community of women who steady her when the world crumbles around her on all sides.
One of the most powerful aspects of “Mary Jane” comes from Herzog’s gradual revelation of the crushing pressures Mary Jane faces with almost preternatural optimism. The sound of whirring, grinding medical machinery (effective work throughout by sound designer Christopher Kriz) in the opening moments is a harbinger. With each scene, the details of Mary Jane and Alex’s lives come into sharper focus. He was born prematurely. He had a brain bleed. He has lung disease, a seizure disorder and pneumonia. He eats through a feeding tube and breathes through a ventilator. He can’t stand up. He can’t lift his head. He can’t speak. A suction device is needed to make sure he doesn’t aspirate on his vomit. His cognitive abilities are unknown.
When she’s not attending to Alex, Mary Jane faces mountains of bureaucracy, from the hours-long insurance “meetings” where she has to justify Alex’s treatment costs to the constant search for nurses to help her cover Alex’s 24/7 care needs. That care puts stark limitations on Mary Jane’s world: If she’s not in her crowded, one-bedroom apartment in Queens, Mary Jane is at the hospital. Both are effectively rendered with memorably monochromatic dreariness by set designer A Inn Doo.
Verdin’s ensemble is exceptional and finely tuned to the nuances within seemingly matter-of-fact conversations about medication management and shift schedules. Lucy Carapetyan’s Mary Jane is defiant, upbeat and endlessly cheerful but clearly aware of the dire financial and medical straits that dominate her life. Mary Jane’s positive attitude never quite masks her exhaustion, anger and frustration — Carapetyan’s delivery is shaded with both.
The rest of the ensemble is double-cast, every character intricate and distinct. As Mary Jane’s laconic building superintendent Ruthie, Mary Beth Fisher is exactly the person you want around when you are in desperate need of a friend with a toilet plunger. Fisher shows up later as Tenkei, a Buddhist hospital chaplain with a gift for empathy and soft-spoken bursts of insight.
Dara Cameron is quietly extraordinary as Brianne and Chaya, both mothers of critically ill children. Brianne is tearful, overwhelmed and resolute. Chaya offers a blunt, thoughtful testimony to the collective strength of a religious community — if not always the religion itself — to provide a soft landing pad in times of trouble. Both scenes are devastating and paradoxically hopeful.
Elana Elyce plays two health care workers — Sherry, a shift nurse who helps Mary Jane at home, and Dr. Toros, a hospital physician. Sherry smoothly navigates the in-home machinery keeping Alex alive. Dr. Toros kindly but insistently makes Mary Jane understand Alex’s conditions are not improving. Kaylah Marie Crosby also stands out as Kat, an overworked music therapist and Amelia, Sherry’s niece. The roles aren’t as memorable as the others, but Crosby makes them vivid.
Herzog makes sure Alex — even though never seen — is more than his ailments. We learn that he loves to watch aquarium fish. He giggles with glee when he’s outside in his special stroller. He’s stubborn. He is a person rather than a collection of extreme maladies. And in one remarkable scene, Mary Jane pirouettes and leaps while spinning a light-up toy that evokes the playfulness of childhood with gleaming beauty.
There are millions of Mary Janes and Alexes. “Mary Jane” makes sure they are seen as far more than their symptoms, powerfully critiquing a health care system that is flawed to the bone.
“Mary Jane” closes on a vague, abrupt and disappointing note that feels like a pause, not a coherent ending. That’s not a deal-breaker. Northlight’s production is well worth seeing.