Review Roundup: Amy Herzog's MARY JANE at New York Theatre Workshop

Following 2013's Belleville, named one of the best plays of the year by The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Herzog and director Anne Kauffman return to New York Theatre Workshop with Mary Jane. During a rain-drenched summer in New York City, an indefatigable single mother navigates the mundane, shattering and sublime aspects of caring for a chronically sick child.

The cast of Mary Jane features LIZA COLÓN-ZAYAS (Between Riverside and Crazy) as "Sherrie/Dr. Toros," Tony and Emmy nominee Carrie Coon ("Fargo", "The Leftovers," Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) as "Mary Jane," Danaya Esperanza (Men on Boats) as "Amelia/Kat," Susan Pourfar (Tribes) as "Brianne/Chaya" and Brenda Wehle (The Crucible) as "Ruthie/Tenkei."

Mary Jane features scenic design by Laura Jellinek (The Light Years), costume design by Emily Rebholz (Dear Evan Hansen), lighting design by Japhy Weideman (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), sound design by Leah Gelpe (Sundown, Yellow Moon), properties by Kathy Fabian (Falsettos), and wig, hair and makeup design by Dave Bova and J. Jared Janas (Bandstand). Lisa Chernoff (Oslo) serves as the Stage Manager.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Photo credit: Joan Marcus

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Jesse Green, The New York Times: But "Mary Jane" is nevertheless a very big drama, even if its conflicts are almost never between people. They are instead between Mary Jane and her unspoken ideas about life - that is, God. To me, this makes "Mary Jane" the most profound and harrowing of Ms. Herzog's many fine plays. But then I'm a parent - and, somewhere deep beneath that, a human.

Adam Feldman, Time Out: At the end of a great theater experience, the audience sometimes leaps into applause. At the performance of Mary Jane I attended, the response was even better. There was a heavy silence before the clapping began: 200 people processing what they had seen and sharing a moment of quiet empathy in the company of strangers, alone together in ten long seconds of dark.

Joe Dziemianowicz, Daily News: One of the triumphs of this clear-eyed, compassionate and engaging play at New York Theatre Workshop through Oct. 29 is that it upends expectations even if it doesn't ever take drastic turns. Fine writing and feel-real dialogue each have ways of exerting an insistent tug. The same holds for strong acting. Carrie Coon (a "Fargo" Emmy nominee who was also up for a Tony for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") plays the title role and is as natural-as-breathing and, finally, quietly devastating.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: 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 and more humanistic, albeit laced with a grounded spirituality.

Jeremy Gerard, Deadline: And yet [Carrie Coon's] work in the title role of Amy Herzog's slow burner of a play, Mary Jane, which opened tonight at the New York Theatre Workshop, coils, quietly and almost imperceptibly, to a climax that, like the death of a loved one, strips us to the core, no matter how well-prepared we think we are.

Sara Holdren, Vulture: If Mary Jane is a saint, then caring for Alex is her passion. Her passion play, however, never quite transcends. It shows us her hardship but not quite enough of her complexity, her darkness. It's a portrait of someone who deserves recognition, but whose story has yet to take full advantage of the power of its art form to make us see.

Tom Geier, The Wrap: Buoyed by a radiant performance by "Fargo" and "The Leftovers" star Carrie Coon, "Mary Jane" emerges as a sharply observed character study of a woman who is heroic in the ordeal she faces down and in her forthright, almost chipper attitude - and who would shrug off the label "heroic" it it were uttered in her presence anyway.

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