Theatre review: Mary Page Marlowe

For one of his last productions at the Old Vic Matthew Warchus directs the UK premiere of Tracy Letts' 2016 play Mary Page Marlowe, in which several actresses play the title character from soon after her birth, to not long before her death. We get to meet her as a baby, with her PTSD-suffering father (Noah Weatherby) and alcoholic mother (Eden Epstein,) the latter also seen undermining a 12-year-old Mary (Alisha Weir.) The casting of Warchus' former Matildae continues with Eleanor Worthington-Cox as the 19-year-old, being read her tarot cards by friends trying to foretell her romantic future but hoping she can define herself in terms that don't just revolve around men. But by Rosy McEwen's twenties and thirties version, she's largely defined herself as someone who cheats on her husband, including with her boss (Ronan Raftery.)

By her forties Andrea Riseborough's Mary is clearly following her mother's example and developing a drinking problem, which will be the cause of some - but not all - of the tragic events that particularly seem to focus on this time in her life.

The production's big draw is Susan Sarandon as Mary in her fifties and sixties, in a third, and finally a happy, marriage to Andy (Hugh Quarshie,) coping with further loss and stoically reconciling herself to her own mortality. Opening with Riseborough's version explaining to her children Wendy (Clare Hughes) and Louis (Griffin Ashton, alternating with Felix Anderson and Dexter Pulling,) how the living arrangements will work after her upcoming divorce from their father, it ends with Sarandon's taking an heirloom quilt to the dry cleaner's.

The patchwork quilt, giving glimpses into the many women who put it together, is obviously the theme of how Letts tells his story: The whole is the story of a single woman made up of many parts, but over the course of her life Mary is many different women; the way she drops or reinstates the "Page" in her name at various times in her life is a way of showing that at least some of these reinventions are conscious, deliberate ones, and not just responses to the way life has buffeted her around.

I'm undecided on how effective this is: In a way I found it satisfying that the play reveals its pattern in this way at the end, but in another I could have done with the theme being woven into the play a bit more discreetly and earlier on; I don't think the quilt has been mentioned until it suddenly becomes a big metaphor in the final scene. Instead the patterns on Rob Howell's in-the-round set made me think of the construction as more like a kaleidoscope, the scenes told out of chronological order and spinning around until they form something that looks like a pattern.

But although some are stronger than others most of the scenes themselves are powerfully written and acted, and if the pattern they create in the end isn't quite as profound and revelatory as it perhaps thinks it is, it's still an entertaining and interesting evening.

Mary Page Marlowe by Tracy Letts is booking until the 1st of November at the Old Vic.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.