Thoughts on Mary Jane at the Manhattan Theater Club

A story that pulls at the heart strings but misses a beat when it comes to character development and the harsh reality of special needs parenting

I was late to the party discovering Amy Herzog. I dodged A Doll's House because I teach the play quite frequently, and I wasn't so sure about the publicity photos of Jessica Chastain's tear-stained face. I did, however, enjoy An Enemy of the People with Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli. I was excited to go and see Mary Jane with Rachel McAdams.

The play is semi-autobiographical, telling the story of a single mother to a sick child. It certainly reminded me of when my kids were little and we had a lot of service providers in our home. There was nothing as severe as what Herzog represents in the play, but there was a fair bit of realism in the conversations about benefits and service providers. We had a hard time finding TSS providers because it was a low-paying job and there was high turn over. We also had run-ins with several of the people who took on the role for my son and daughter, oftentimes because of inexperience of lack of interest in the work.

Speaking to a friend yesterday, though, I had the opportunity to think about some of the details within the play that I found problematic. First, and most obvious to me, the ending was weak. The lights cut out and we go to applaud as Mary Jane (McAdams) stares helplessly upwards, awaiting news that her two or three year old son has died in surgery. The whole thing was so anticlimactic that the supporting cast members ran out on to the stage ahead of the curtain call. Talk about missing your cue!

Second, and more evident now that I have had time to think about it, was the representation of Mary Jane herself. Special needs parents typically experience very high levels of stress. I used to be part of a support group for moms of autistic kids, and I distinctly remember a guest lecturer coming to our group and discussing the higher risks of stress related illness that affect special needs parents. It's not that Mary Jane doesn't experience stress (she most definitely does) but the representation of her character is almost sugar-sweet.

Everything about her seems designed to elicit sympathy. She is a single parent, but not because she got pregnant by accident. Her partner abandoned her after their child was born and revealed to have all kinds of medical complications. There was an audible gasp from the audience when she described going home from the hospital, having just given birth, and finding that her partner had upped stakes. She is hopelessly poor and working a dead-end job that she is on the verge of losing. Yet, she wanted to be a teacher and was in school working towards that goal before the birth of her child. The reason she can't work more is clearly not a lack of skill or inclination - it is entirely to do with her sick child. Finally, Mary Jane, whose name invariably makes me think of marijuana, also exhibits a personality so mellow, there's only one time in the play that she actually loses her temper with anyone (the music therapist she's been waiting months to schedule).

I realized this week what bothered me so much about this sweeter than sweet presentation. To me, it seems to reinforce the idea that women, in particular, are not allowed to be angry and they are not allowed to be assertive. Guaranteed that to meet the needs of a special needs child, you have to be assertive, it follows that you should also be allowed to express anger and frustration when the system and sometimes the people within it are dragging their heals or trying to withhold information that is critical to your child's well-being. Mary Jane should have been a bit more of a bitch - at least when dealing with the various service providers who try to give her the run-around and are more worried about their convenience than hers.

I also concur with my friend's object to the stereotyping of the Jewish mother in the hospital scene and indeed the spiritual representatives whose conversations with Mary Jane fill certain gaps in the texts and latch on to dimensions of the moral dilemma of having a sick child. Yesterday I attended a play about infertility in which most of the characters shouted at G-d, complaining about not having a child when so many less worthy people got pregnant, no problem. While I don't think Mary Jane needs to go quite that far (nothing needs to, really), it would have been nice to explore the complex emotions that arise from having a child with a disability or illness. Ignoring those feelings or pretending they don't exist in a play like this really seems like a missed opportunity.