Theatre in Review: Mary Page Marlowe (Second Stage Theater/Tony Kiser Theater)

	Gary Wilmes, Tatiana Maslany. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Even as an addition to Tracy Letts' resume -- which, besides August: Osage County and Man from Nebraska, includes the paranoid arachnid freak-out, Bug, and the trailer-trash melodrama, Killer Joe -- Mary Page Marlowe is a real oddity. It is something I've never seen before: an epic miniature. Forget Three Tall Women: Letts requires no fewer than six actresses to impersonate the title character, plus a dozen more performers to flesh out the story of her life from ages 12 to 69. Whether so much effort yields a commensurate amount of insight is debatable. The play is constructed of vignettes, strung together out of chronological order, which capture Mary Page at various inflection points. They are so many scrambled puzzle pieces that, combined, form only a partial portrait of a woman who describes herself as "unexceptional" -- a judgment the script does little to challenge.

Indeed, she is almost defiantly ordinary. An inhabitant, variously, of Ohio and Kentucky, Mary Page is a wife (three times over), a not-very-competent mother, and by profession a CPA. She's also damaged and damaging, a wiz at passing on her unacknowledged pain to those who love her. For a good chunk of her adulthood, she is never far from a bottle of whiskey, at least until disaster strikes. Observing these fragments of her life, the feeling persists that if Letts had chosen to tell it in straightforward fashion, it might seem crushingly banal. Add in Mary Page's taciturn, just-the-facts approach to even the most traumatic episodes -- she is the living embodiment of a certain kind of stoic Midwestern sensibility -- and you have a maddeningly elusive character; her indifference to her inner life is so profound that it's hard to care about what she so clearly doesn't.

The play's collage-like structure has its compensations, particularly in the way that certain ideas and phrases reoccur, radically reframed by the passage of time. Mary Page, in her thirties, breaks the news to her son and daughter that she is moving them from Dayton, Ohio, to Lexington, Kentucky. Wendy, her daughter, complains, "I don't want to spend my last two years in high school with a bunch of hillbillies!" Mary Page replies, "This isn't Paris," adding, "Do you really think a couple of hundred miles makes that much difference? Every place is the same." A few scenes later, the nineteen-year-old Mary Page, stunning her girlfriends with the news that she has refused her beau's marriage proposal, adds, "I want to see Paris." (Her friend Connie throws cold water on this idea, suggesting that it is a whim inspired by their viewing of the Audrey Hepburn film Charade.) Soon after, the sixtyish Mary Page's third husband, Andy, hands her a letter that informs her she is "free at last." "It means I can leave the state," she says. "It means I don't have to pee in a cup anymore."

We learn plenty about the events that caused her to be labeled a criminal, which inhibited Mary Page's travel plans, along with many other woes; most of the time, however, the information is delivered so jaggedly that it doesn't compel. The evening's principal pleasures come from a gifted cast, most of whom appear in only a scene or two. (It's a full evening of cameo roles.) Among those playing Mary Page, the standouts are Susan Pourfar, coolly explaining the terms of her divorce to her kids and, later, struggling to hold herself together when a child goes missing, and Kellie Overbey, throwing caution and her second marriage to the wind as she assumes responsibility for an act of destruction that can't be taken back. (This is the one scene in which the character sheds her formidable defenses, uttering a primal scream that shakes the house.) Also good is Tatiana Maslany as Mary Page in her twenties, taking part in some joyless workday adultery, and, a few years later, sparring with a therapist, to whom she bitterly admits, "All of it happened to me, and I went along with it, and I, I...I never affected anything, I never altered the course." Blair Brown brings her considerable charm to bear on Mary Page in her later years, but she is saddled with the play's dullest scenes, including a finale that wraps up nothing.

Among those playing her friends, lovers, and relatives, there are fine contributions from Kayli Carter as Wendy, who grows up far more mature than her mother; Brian Kerwin as Mary Page's one decent, loving spouse; Maria Elena Ramirez as a sympathetic hospital nurse; and Gary Wilmes, as an afternoon lothario. Best of all is Grace Gummer as Mary Page's piece-of-work mother, Roberta, who brusquely dismisses her daughter's singing skills, spars with her over the supply of maraschino cherries used to garnish her Old Fashioneds, and, just before abandoning her (at least temporarily), adds, "You're gonna have to toughen up some, Mary Page. The world is a mean old place."

The director, Lila Neugebauer, handles everyone with assurance; she also provides some striking effects, including Ed (Nick Dillenburg), Mary Page's no-good father, standing over the crib, looking at the infant, his shadow looming as he sings about saloons, and a tableau posing five Mary Pages in silhouette against a brightly illuminated upstage wall. (Laura Jellinek's abstract two-level setting and Tyler Micoleau's understated, yet infinitely variable, lighting, are of great assistance.) Kaye Voyce's costumes draw on several decades' worth of styles, guaranteeing that we understand the time frame of each scene. Brandon Wolcott's sound design nicely reinforces the melancholy electric piano chords of Bray Poor's original music; Wolcott also supplies such effects as a crying baby, telephone rings, and Debbie Reynolds singing her signature hit, "Tammy." David Barbour